Gazelle

Remember when you were a gazelle in cableknit tights, leaping and bounding from couch fortress to carpet? Remember when your desk drawers were filled with stationery upon which you scrawled Big Important Letters with your Big Important Thoughts, "i's" dotted with hearts, to Fairly Important People, e.g. your aunt Doris? Where did she go? That girl with the cocksure brand of confidence, that unmistakable moxie that worried not a trifle about recess playmates. She'd find someone. Or she'd find a slide to scale.

That girl with wings became a girl who forgot she had the power to soar. Many days now she is tethered to presumed outcomes of what she presumes she ought to be doing. She is hemmed in, conforming, filled with big ideas but wary, fearful of speaking out of turn.

On occasion we see that girl, the gazelle that defied gravity, wearing a ladybug motorcycle helmet, buzzing on a moped with her eyes fixed on the road, and a smile spread wide for no reason, in spite of the wind.