They told me to keep running, to never stop, to breathe through it, that just when I feel like giving up, I’ve only used 35% of my potential or something like that so I walked before I crawled- a mad dash suspended in every tentative wobble until I was the fastest girl in my class, as long as they were sprints because long distance never held my attention until I found myself running across state lines and rocky mountains, ping pong passed back and forth with paws hanging, but I always bounced back and my leaps found fluidity, breathing breathless, close your eyes and breathe until you’ve run into new people and new lands, like the land of angels, sunny California where people don’t run but scurry like rabid rodents, hunting new holes, so I ran along- still the fifty yard dash, lightning speed, even when my shins splintered back home where a boy filled my heart with thick tar that oozed into my shoes, weighing me down until he took a piece of me and ran with it because time seems to freeze when you’re moving too fast; a space-time anomaly with unintended consequences so I shed the extra layers and sprinted to Spain, syllables rolled off the tongue like the rolling hills of Granada where I ran with the river, never stopping to admire my reflection because what’s the point when it’s just a blur, however beautiful it may be, and I did this for a while; no longer a stowaway but a runaway, who one day zipped back to a four letter place that some called HOME and I once called HELL and I was still the fastest girl like back in the third grade field day, I always like to win but along the way I learned to lose; I won the race and lost myself and kept running until I picked I tall back up, but now as I breathe through screaming lungs and scorched soles, I don’t wish to run to higher mountains or deeper depths, but instead fully breathe the air, into the bottom of my lungs, I breathe the people, their smiles, their teeth and the tips of their noses, I smell the sea mist and the heavy smog until I can’t breathe any longer so I pull out a chair; small hard, and wooden until I’m sat with hands on knees taking a precious eternal moment suspended in spinning time to simply
slow down.