The Tunnel by Lone Peak

All you can hear is the slapping of your feet against the asphalt. You're running from the crime you committed--you made art. Art where people didn't want it, in that tunnel next to the high school. You told yourself that you didn't have the guts to do it, and there was something exhilarating about rubbing the triumph in your own face. You're still not sure it was worth the stress you inspired in your mother when you stayed out until two in the morning, but at least now you're satisfied. They can't control everything.

You have a new job. It's better than the last one. Your coworkers have no idea what you did after work on July 4th, and they'll never need to know. 

There's another meeting. They'll be finding the one who did it today. Even though your pockets are empty, they know you stole something. It must have been you. No one is exempt from the meeting, especially not you. They know you must have done something wrong. And you're running out of second chances.

No one listens. They smile and nod and tell you that they'll consider your worries, but really, they're mapping out a schedule for the next sixty years of your life. There is no escape. Why even bother talking. Why even bother breathing?

The summer is warm, but the thought of winter gives you anxiety. It's a tightness in your chest cavity that winds itself up when it remembers what it was like last time. 

Don't send me back there. Don't send me back there. Don't send me back there. Don't s e n d me ba c k th e r e...

It was cold there. It was so cold. You wore a sweater. The cold touched you through it. You wrapped yourself in a blanket, but you still shivered. You buried yourself in your bed, never to come out of the warm darkness. You trembled again.

You drove to the other side of town. Nothing changed. You didn't move. You drove to the other side of town. The trees looked different at first, but then you realized that the house with the green door is still there in your peripheral vision. How could anything leave that tiny place? It's small enough to fold up and tuck in your wallet, like a dollar bill. It doesn't stretch, it only squeezes, tighter and tighter until you pass out. 

The heartache and the loneliness and the cold could have happened anywhere. But since it happened there, it's like a food you threw up and can't bring yourself to eat again. Maybe this time will be different. It has to be different. I have to change--adapt--or I won't survive. But how? 

Don't make me go back there.

At least this time, you'll have your chalk with you. When the cold becomes too much, you can always run out into the night and find that one place where no one ever is and draw. Draw to forget the cold.