Since I can't sleep...

Loose sheets of paper drifted in every direction. Some caught the wisp of a breeze that was passing along and floated away with it. Others gently descended onto the pavement. 

The young girl sat at the edge of a bridge. She looked into the passing river and relished in the trickling sounds of water on stone. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of clean, crisp air and then she knew it. She knew what she'd been missing. A smile made its entrance. She tilted her face towards her right shoulder, eyes still closed, and let her shoulder rise up to meet the cheek that desired acknowledgment. She winced. Small thoughts of the days reaching up to this point hurried along her mind's tracks. She opened her eyes and looked at the sky. Everything seemed to silence itself in that moment. That's what she was missing. Blue skies and fluffed clouds, sun rays and wishful dreams whispered to stars present, but not seen. 

She looked down at her worn hands and rubbed them. If only floors and dishes didn't need scrubbing and polishing. A little higher up, on her wrists, were burns, some more bright pink than others; some still stinging more than others. If only tempers and frustrations didn't need . . . 

She looked back up at the sky, tears trickling from eye to chin. They rolled passed her swollen eye, passed her bruised cheek, over her bloody lip, and down her quivering chin. 

"If only they didn't need me."

She had come to the bridge to write a letter. One that would reach those she was planning on leaving behind. After so much pain she saw no choice but to leave. Flesh and blood seems to matter less when it is striking flesh and drawing blood. 

To be continued. 

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