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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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