2016Bluestone

Running Wild Kansas Brooks

I breathe in the crisp mountain air, with nothing but sunshine on my skin. The jagged rocks roll under the soles of my feet, but I do not stop. There is higher ground to be found. Higher than these mountains, higher than my father has ever been. I’ve never felt as clean as I feel in this moment. I am naked and alone, but surround- ed by forget-me-nots rather than the cigarette stained walls I’d grown accustomed to. I am not ashamed of my current status as a runaway, I am taking pride in it. Each day, we are all given the choice to run. What the word “run” means is relative to each of us. When danger begins to sashay up my vertebrae, and my wounds cease to heal, I am struck with the desire to run. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last. My father was an addict, scrounging and begging for any- thing that would make him feel alive. This constant search to feel alive, left him the opposite. I am often tormented with the memory of his hands. Hands once so playful and light, grasping mine in an Autumn daze turned heavy and hardened. Streaks of blood lined the wrists and forearms attached to the hands of my diligent father. I viewed them with the knowledge that with every relapse, the nee- dle becomes harder to insert. Each time a situation is left, it becomes harder to return to. I shed my second skin of flannel upon discovering the ashes of the burning building I dubbed “father” for the last time. In the trees, I have become anew.

Kansas Brooks is a seventeen year old student at Grayson County High School pursuing a career in journalism with dreams of one day writing for The New York Times.

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