I don’t know how long I’ve been walking the twisted, overgrown path. It seems as if it runs on for miles, eating up the fields of green painted against the deep, azul blue sky. Specks of white dot the blanket of clouds, and I try not to stop and stare up at the stars like I used to do. Back then, I had time to stop. I had time to watch the patterns nature made up in the places that I couldn’t reach, to imagine that I was one of the people flying their machines through the sky and swooping through the bronze streaks of a golden sun. But now, I cant afford to halt.

I’m not sure if _she’s_ still following me, and I don’t want to turn back to look. Just in case I find her haunting, sunken eyes staring back at mine through the long blades of grass. I’m afraid I might catch her crying again. Pleading for a second chance, her screams echoing through the bare wasteland.

I try to assure myself that it’s been at least a day since I’ve left. I’ve witnessed the sun set and rise, the cows in the hills get milked in the early morning and chomp on grass from the fields in the silver-streaked afternoon. I’ve watched our bare home fade out of view as my candlelight dimmed and left me in a pool of darkness. I tell myself that it’s not possible for her wails to still be echoing behind me, for her shadow to appear in every place that I glance. _It’s just my mind, _I think. _You don’t have to worry anymore. You’re free._

The cracks in the pavement slither through the concrete as I walk. They slice through the smooth gray material and leave the ground rocky and hard, splitting up the trail into sections that make it look like it’s a trail of rock. A trail that splits the rolling feilds and half, marking a line between countless properties along the edge of the deserted area. _Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back, _I murmur to myself in the back of my mind, remembering the old rhyme that was told to me throughout my elementary years. _Wouldn’t that be funny if it were true, then I wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place._

If only it was a simple nursery rhyme that had killed my mother. Then, I wouldn’t have to deal with the guilt of her blood stained on my own calloused hands.