Red Sands

I knew this place as a child.
I walked this ground
with the confident steps
of a girl who had
everywhere to go
and nowhere to be.
A childhood painted in red sand.

I return now,
more of a woman
but no less of a girl,
and I find that my steps
are timid.

I tiptoe around
the memory of adolescence,
and find myself in that
nostalgic place
where yester-years feel like
yesterdays-
back when life was a painting
of red sands
and blue skies,
an unfinished masterpiece
with no lines to color inside of.

I emerge slowly
into the present,
and make my way down
that windy road
back home
carrying nothing with me
but a heart full of remembrances
and a shoe full of red sand.