My third challenge entry. Thanks to Hulaberry32 for the quote: "Life is a gift. That's why it's called the present."

Slogging through quicksand, mired in mud.
Skin hanging torn, oozing dark webs of bodily tears.
Blood. Struggling against tangles of vines.
My hands are snared. They beat, but won't rip through.
The air is thick and dark, moist heat rising off spongy ground.
Clouds of steam and fog form. I can't see where I'm going.
I try to push back the way I came, sweat
streaming from my screaming back. Salt
has been grinding into my wounds all day.
It's in my stinging eyes by tears won't fall.
Tears are cleansing and nothing here has known purity.
Something won't let me turn back
to the places that came before this one. The
treacherous deceitful path led me here and I can't
go back the way I came, back to the before lands. I'm scared to go on,
but it's the only way.
Some were denied the gift of life, drowned
at birth, their nostrils pinched, their flailing little
bodies so acutely helpless. Atrocity, but for them,
it's all over now. And I stand here--
barely, hunched from vines sinuously twisting, twining
around my shoulders and rib cage. Alive, but
it should have been me. It'd be all over now and I was not
meant for this. But then I realize
Why should I be?
I only did what "they" told me I was "supposed to" do.
It only hurts worse.
I don't have to be tormented by the taunting before places
And if I must continue this path, fearing it does me no good.
Why not just plunge in recklessly and keep pushing without thought?
If I can't go back, I'll move onward, yes
But in a better way. Why must I be heavily stuck to the ground?
Why not use my wings? I relax. Let the vines entangle--cradle me,
and I swing! On them, I sway in the air.
The smell of this place. I want to leave, and if I must go on, so I will.
They tell me to get up and stop making a spectacle of myself.
Regardless, I begin to roll down the path as a child rolls
down a hill, clumsily, dizzily,
laughing.