When she was 14 she was taught to walk.

She walked to get away from the noise of a home that she did not consider her home. So she toddled through her moderate sized town and replaced the noise with city sounds until she got bored and moved to a bigger city with greater sounds.

She had a place to eat and sleep, but really she was homeless still, so she welcomed the vastness of the City like a new yet familiar friend and prowled through strange streets solemnly and quickly as though she had a destination. The people, buildings, sounds a blur.

Sometimes, when the clouds were feeling restless, the sun would peek through the heart of the city and cast a gold filter across the buzzing streets, and it was rare and beautiful, and in these moments she would stand still. When the clouds consumed the sun (as she knew they inevitably would) she wondered why nothing gold could stay.

She walked to stay warm. Her jacket was thin and the city cold. She kept walking even when the ground rumbled, and the soaring, mile-high buildings began to shake. Even if they fell, if the city collapsed and sunk into the sea, it wouldn’t matter.

Someone smiled at her, and she began to cry.

She walked faster.

When she was 20 she taught herself to run.

By then her time in the City had expired so she walked to the Beach.

It was June Gloom when she first arrived. A thin sheet stretched over the sky—Overcast.

Neutral tones surround her as she quickens her pace to a jog; the sun begins its ascent. She greets it, hello, but it disappears again. She won’t let that stop her so she runs faster still, sprinting now. An horizon is born between the fiery star and its captor. Even when the sun abandons her she continues to run. Would June ever end?

She stomps hard— Bang! Bang! Bang! —on the uneven concrete.

She wishes that the veil would leave so she can finally feel the sun on her bare skin. She thinks to herself that she is trying in vain. She can never change…

‘But June can’t possibly last forever,’ she thinks to herself. So she keeps running with the hope that one day she can feel the sun.