Sometimes the city becomes too much.
The Stantec Tower looms over me, hard and rigid,
the endless glass walls suffocating my ability to thrive.
The perpetual lines of car after truck after SUV send me in loops through my brain.
One thought follows another and another and another and another,
each only idling, coughing puffs of emissions into the divots of my brain.
So, I run to the mountains,
to the rivers,
to the forests and the cliffs and the meadows.
I run to where the world holds room for me.
To where I can expand and develop and just be.
To where I can breathe out of monotony and into tranquility of self.
I intertwine with the crooked, reaching branches of the robust poplar trees,
filling in and feeling each gap, each crevice, and stretching with the flourishing leaves.
I challenge the austere cliffs of who I am,
standing on the edge, peering down into the possibilities of who I could become.
I let my thoughts flow with the dynamic river, allowing the crashes and jolts to take me,
push me, pull me, and shape me.
I blossom with the wildflowers in the meadows, bracing my beauty and elegance
against the billowing, howling wind and the sly, devious weeds that attempt to uproot me.
Emma Dietze 