Mia ran through an almost-forgotten forest path, crushed pines beneath her shoes. She was angry, and she felt it burning in every drop of her blood. She felt like she wanted to scream, to cry, to break something - anything.
She stopped at a clearing, an abandoned playground. She didn't know why there was a playground within the woods, but it belonged to the memories of children who had long since outgrown this place.
The paint was peeling, revealing rusting metal beneath. Swings were broken and lay on the ground, wood splintered and decayed. There was an eeriness to it. It almost made Mia let go of her anger, but she clung on to it. She felt a deep, crimson anger. Anger at her parents, her sister, her school, herself.
She kept pushing herself away from everyone, and it had always been like that. She wanted someone to save her. She was growing older. She knew the world didn't work that way. She still wished. And now to complicate things, she had met a mysterious boy with long eyelashes and golden hair, shining with a mellow light like the autumn sun. She wished she was brave enough to let go of her anger. To yell out profanities instead of letting the feeling fester and become her only driving force.
The sun gleamed off the shards of broken glass on the ground. She grabbed one, all too aware of how she could cut herself with it. She grabbed her long hair in a fist, and began painstakingly sawing it off with the blunt piece of glass.
She ended up with unevenly cut strands of her sticking to her face with tears and sweat, her palms red and bloody. She had tried to leave her scattered around the old playground, but she still carried some stray hairs on her clothes as she walked back home.