My feet dance for me, pulling me rushing across the empty expanse of grass. "The quickest path is a straight line," a textbook echoes in my mind. Then I fly, cutting my own path through the thicket of imagination. My path doesn't vary between grass or cement, it twists and turns, carving itself as I run. Then I am there, and I don't look back....most of the time. Once, I happened to turn back and look behind me at the path I had blazed, and I saw the grass springing back into place, as if my giant footstep hadn't affected it in the least. I wondered if this was the effect I had on everything and everyone in my life.
The next day, beaten down, forced to choose between one life and another, I pick my way slowly across the cement, following the beaten path already set out before me, unwilling to make my own just to watch it disappear.