I'm the only girl that I still know that pulls her hair back into childish bunches and still dyes it colours it was never meant to be. I feel like I'm old, man, old beyond my years. I'm nineteen, but I swear it feels like my life is over already. Like I'm a small town girl and the world doesn't really care for me in any way, other than to have me stay here and to fall in the door of a house that I don't care about and try to make it a home, while I raise kids there with a man I hardly love, that finds it hard to love me. I know I have plenty to offer when I'm in the confines of my room, or behind the wheel of my car, but I can't get that out. Not to anyone or anything. I was driving home tonight, just now, over the brow of my hill and the sky still hadn't fully darkened. That's how I can always tell it's summer. It gets darker, but it never gets fully dark. It's like the sun's an energetic child that never wants to rest his bones, waiting on Santa Claus and peeking out over the staircase, hoping it's safe. I saw a beautiful little fox near my house, he ran right across the road and looked straight at me. He was thin, too thin, and I considered going back and leaving food for him, but that could just tempt him out into oncoming traffic again. It used to be quiet around these parts, trees and fields full of sheep and cows and even horses in parts. But there are streetlights now, everywhere and on every corner, and houses full of young families and older families and you can always hear children on the streets. Right where the cows and their calves used to graze. You look down over the valley towards the river, but all you can ever see are houses, and the only way to truly see it at it's best now is to close your eyes and try your best to imagine. I'm just glad I wasn't born seventy years ago, when none of this was here, because I don't think I could face looking out my window today if I did. I could probably live in a treehouse if nobody else would mind, smelling the fresh rain every morning as I woke. What I'm saying really is that I was born for better things. Maybe not great things, maybe greatness was never intended to cross my path. But I know somewhere inside me that there's so much more than this, a life that consists of so much less, filled with perfection in the most empty of places.