Purity

When I was a little girl, I liked to run.

I liked to hear the wind whistle in my little ruddy ears.

Feet caked with earth, little bits of grass between my toes.

I liked to run in my pearl-white dress. Raspberry ribbon tied around my waist.

Crumpled silk, and a ring I secretly pilfered from my mother's jewelry box. Too big even for my chubby cherub hands. I lost it in the tall grass.

I'd run as fast as I could push my legs. Shrubs would catch my bare, rounded arms. Thistles clinging to my capped sleeves.

Running until I rolled my ankle on a sneaky little rock.

And then my body would collapse, I'd nurse my wounded joint and then fall onto my back into daisy patches.

Clouds like cats, and bunnies, and dragons above. Clouds rolling above me ever so slowly.

I'd spread out my arms like angel wings and feel the little black beetles and sweet little potato bugs pass over my arms.

The smell of summer like no other smell.

When I was a little girl, I tore through the woods and splashed in the creek, and tried to catch crawdads. I called them crawdaddies. 

I watched tadpoles wriggle.

I had black dirt all the way up my shins.

I liked to be alone, dragging my dolls by the arms through hydrangea bushes. Burying trinkets in secret places.

Shimmers of a silver tea spoon before I covered it in dirt. Little rubber bracelets boys gave me in school hidden all over the garden.

I picked blackberries until my fingers had a sanguine hue. I ate the whole bowl before I ever made it home with them.

My knees were grass-stained. Scraped up.

My body was lived-in, dirty and prickled and plump with sunshine.

When I was a little girl, I snuck into my neighbors yard and crawled into their rabbit hutch.

I pet little fluffy things. I felt safe. I hid.

When I was a little girl...

I never wanted to be home. I danced in the rain, and sweated pure young sweat in the summer sun, and sled down grassy knolls covered in powdery snow on the lid of a garbage bin.

I never wanted to be inside.

And when I did it was only to clumsily grab a luscious cherry popsicle, like a ruby in my mind's eye, I craved it so.

I was a pure, fresh, un-marred thing with gold highlights in my hair.

When I was a little girl, I used to run. For fun. From nothing.

Now that I am a big girl, I run for different reasons. To escape.