Paradise

It was a clock like place filled with known sites and known feelings. Still the women ran around the track without fear of change. The heat blistered from the track as the women entered her 3rd lap. Her blue shoes continuing on , they’ve never stopped , or failed her. There’s the growing green tree she’s always seen as she passes it by. The birds chirp above as she whistles by them. Her heart pumps and her blood is flowing it’s early in the morning in the middle of the week. She’d discovered this track long ago in her earlier days when the tree was only a bud and the birds hadn’t hatched yet. The old wooden stands stood there like herself.Old and beaten down but still they stood. Her strides were different from when she was younger. In out, In out the oxygen entered her lungs and left with a whisper. The breeze of the early morn biting her skin leaving the marks of unhealed bruises. “One more,” she thought in her head as she rounded her last and final lap. Of course this was her favorite because when she stopped running she would catch a glimpse of the way she used to feel alive and free; but the track just like the heat would take it back in. The women grabbed her water and walked up the familiar path to her home. This routine lasted another five days.
The women walked back down the path in the breeze of the early morning to find a sign beside the track. “Closed for repairs,” it stated as she stared at the flooded ground from last nights storm. The women was woebegone and disheartened as she watched the water consume the track. She started to go back to the familiar path when she saw a very, very narrow trail. She glanced up to see the birds chirping as they flew over the trail also knowing about the watery conditions at the track. It started as a simple walk to this foreign plain, to a sprint of curiosity. The women had never felt so alive as she swerved up, down, on dirt and grass, seeing things she had never seen. Looking into an open world instead of an inevitable oblivion. Her mind flashed back to her younger days, when she wore the same light blue shoes and ran the same track every morning. “This is how life should be lived,” she said to herself as she laughed and laughed. Her breath coming in strides. She saw old trees, new trees, flowers, birds, and ponds. The women never knew all the amazing things in the world that were meant to be seen. This paradise only a step away if only she’d known. In out, in out, the oxygen was getting harder to receive. As she stared at the sky