Running Away
I wandered down to the water’s edge, shaded my eyes, and tried to judge the distance to the island. It was shimmering in the heat haze, green like a jewel on a surround of blue satin. La Gomera is one of the seven Canary Islands, but the sea is sprinkled with an archipelago of atolls and reefs; I had seen one rugged outcropping covered in coarse grass inhabited by goats, the bells about their necks showing that they belonged to somebody, that everything and everyone becomes a possession, is owned and spoken for, even slithers of rock in the middle of the sea.
On a whim, I threw my sunglasses back on my towel and strode into the surf breaking on the shoreline. The long hours of afternoon stretched vacantly before me and I thought idly I might leave La Gomera and travel on to El Hierro, the Meridian Island, the smallest of the Canaries, the furthest south, the furthest from London.
‘The further the better,’ I heard myself say and I wasn’t sure why, what I was thinking, what I was 
running away from? I swam naked into the waves and it felt as if I was at the beginning of a great adventure. – from Girl Trade
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