By Audrey Lambert, TIWP Student

The girl sat on the bench, staring straight ahead, grinding her teeth. She just couldn’t take that goddamned party anymore. She ran her fingers through her hair and adjusted her velvet dress.

Why had they forced her to come here? Forced her to wear a dress? Forced her to be trapped inside the drapes of this delicate color?

Was it the same reason they forced her to plaster a smile onto her face? Forced her to act ‘lady like?’ Told her not to speak unless spoken to?

All the girl wished for was to be able to express herself, to translate the toughness of her personality to the way she walked and talked. The girl wanted to scream out her opinions with the violence of a tempestuous storm and shake the earth with her feelings. But they wouldn’t allow that.

She stood up from the bench, yanked the high heels from her feet and ran, ran with the passion of her heart and the strength of her mind. The violet dress licked her legs, making her look as graceful as ever. Yet, the fierceness of her facial expression and the ferocity of her pounding footsteps said otherwise.

When she reached her house she went to her closet and yanked out all of the dainty garments that put her in shackles as soon as their delicate fabrics touched her skin. She piled them up on the floor just as she had allowed her feelings to pile up.

She wiped the makeup off of her face until all the mascara shadowed her under eyes making her look like a racoon, “Suits me better,” she said to the mirror.

She flung her window open and screamed, screamed louder than her mind did when they told her to be quiet, screamed louder than her heart did when she was forced to wear a smile along with a feminine dress. She screamed until her neighbor yelled at her to shut up.

“Never!” she replied. But she closed the window and with it she shut her mouth. Instead, she took a pen to paper and let the screams of her heart and mind meld into a harmony of words. The ink on the paper became her soul, and in that moment she was finally free.