OF SEARCHING.

it was shoddily built, but what did expect from a six year old? when my dad offered to help, i'd declined; i could do it all by myself - when had i lost that independence? it wasn't even a club house... not really. it was more like a wooden fence nailed on top of a few fat branches high enough up in a tree to require a ladder of thick pieces of wood nailed to the trunk. i was never the princess type, anyway.

the wood, warped by eleven years time, moaned underneath me and my sleeping bag as i turned over to lay on my stomach. it just getting light and soon the sun would peak over the hills that lay just to the east of my makeshift bed in brilliant colors of pink and purple and yellow and orange.

i rested my head on my hands looking in that direction, waiting, and trying not to fall asleep. i closed my eyes; i hadn't slept well in my room, there was too much shouting and violence tossed around in there.

pictures of us decorated the walls, screaming happiness and joy that no longer existed. when i'd tried to pry them off, the frames burned me and the nails made me bleed. the blanket choked me, wrapping the intoxicating smell of his hair around my throat and successfully making it impossible to draw a breath. the teddy bear attacked my feet, even when i kicked it across the room, and the toy-story watch he'd gotten in his happy meal that one time beeped and beeped until the resonance nearly turned my brain to jelly.

so i'd escaped to my childhood house, searching for innocence.

light flooded the inside of my eyelids and i opened them, squinting at the sun as it brought saturday morning over the hills. thats when i saw it, the buck, standing on top of the largest hill silhouetted by the orange of the early morning. i sighed and smiled just a bit.

maybe i had made the right decision: in coming out here, in leaving him...

i was just beginning to think that i was finally content with the world, if only for a few minutes, when a gunshot rang out and the buck crumbled to the ground. "i got one, dad!" i heard my brother yelling from the distance. "did you see that?"

i turned my head to face opposite the sun and opposite the world's sign that, then again, maybe i hadn't.

[2.23.10]