Don't Read This Unless You Have ABsolutely NOTHING Else to Do

This is gonna be part of my paper...

The swamp just beyond the wall is her only escape from the desolation inside the house. The girl gets up from the dinner table and saunters out the back door. Her insides have completely dried up again. If she dares speak, dust and ash will fall from her mouth, and she'd be silently scolded for making a mess.

She stands three feet from the edge of the swamp and finally lets out her breath. The dust and ash float toward the water and disappear onto its moss. She sits down, embraced by a thin fog. Damp air moistens her lungs, and she remains still and silent for awhile, paralyzed but awake to her insides stirring themselves back to life. A feeling of home settles into her chest.

It's a different kind of silence out here than in the house. It's fresh and moist. And when something stirs out here in the woods--a bird, a breeze--the sound emerges from the silence--is borne of it--and nothing is disturbed. There is silence and sound at the same time. Words like these come to the girl and she knows it is the swamp talking to her. She doesn't tell anyone, though. No one would believe her and that would make her insides turn back to dust and ash. That's what not believing a girl can do.

---------the boring version----------

Angeline hated being in the house. No one really spoke in there--even at dinner--and if they did, what they said was so boring. It seemed that only boring things were allowed there. Whenever she said anything interesting--anything that mattered--her mother would start removing imaginary dust from the table. It seemed that the girl's words made the house unclean.

She found comfort by visiting the swamp that was just beyond the rock wall separating the backyard from the woods. She could relax there. It was her real home--a place where she could breathe and smell life. She sits here for hours having imaginary conversations with the swamp. In these conversations, the swamp always tells her the truth and never ignores her. When the swamp is silent, she tells herself that the swamp is still thinking about what she's said. It believes her and so makes her life bearable.