Saturday, June 21, 2008

reckless ambition

She never noticed how quickly the clouds moved here.
They moved even too quickly to lie in the grass and create animals out of the shapes that they might make. All she could do was lie there and let time slow down as the clouds spend on. Today was the first day that she'd found solace in a simple thing and she needed that because her life hadn't stopped moving at all in the last year.
Her heart wouldn't stop thinking.
And all the thinking her heart was doing was just getting her into more trouble.

And while she lie there, she moved away with the clouds, speeding faster and faster - far away from the troubles caused by her heart. She found herself in the mountains of East Africa, where lakes lie peacefully in forests full of gorillas. This fantasy she hadn't allowed herself to feel for years, since the days she began to think more practically. But here she was, standing by one of those beautiful clear lakes, untouched by the ruthless hands of modern technology. She listened to the far away calls of the gorillas and flocks of birds bursting through the trees as they are disrupted by some forest-dwellers. She closed her eyes there - in that forest - and her heart began to cry and soar at the same time.

Because she was there.

Twenty and remembering the fantasies of an ambitious eleven year-old who's only goal was to save those less fortunate than her. Twenty and knowing how it feels to be freed from the daily toils of trying to prove her self-worth to strangers whom she will never see again. Twenty and freed from trying to be who she thinks she's supposed to be for the ones she cares about most.

And when she opens her eyes again, she sees the clouds slow above and she knows that she still has it in her.

She still has the reckless ambition of her eleven year-old self which is all she needs in order to make her life worth it.

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