No one told her that the road would be this hard.
No one told her that pretty, musical words would so quickly turn into dusty, dissonant sounds of lonely wandering. Shadows danced across tree limbs and shrouded her face, encircling her features in misty, forgotten memories. Thick, heavy raindrops weighed down the corners of her mouth and her eyes until she couldn’t see where she was going, and couldn’t smile along the way. She could feel girls brushing past her, lovesick girls, scholarly girls, prize girls. They laughed and sang and their voices lifted the wind like flutes and she felt her face beginning to loosen. But then she remembered, and the rain fell once more.
No one told her that talons would clench her hair and lift her above the trees so that her eyes flew open and she was forced to watch what she was missing with an aching head and aching feet.
No one had told her that the right path isn’t the right path for everyone and even when you spend precious time and flesh getting onto the other, wrong path, the wrong one is also wrong.
No one told her that nothing would feel right.
No one told her that the darkness that came with the “wrong path” was absolute and unconditional.
No one told her about the torment. The cuts and bruises and hot angry tears and screams of internal bleeding.
No one told her how much her feet would ache.
No one told her how heavy her eyelids would be, or how soft the ground was.
No one told her how easy it would be to sleep.
No one.
No one.
No.
Never.
Now.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
Robert Frost
