The Run

A sharp metallic shot rings out.

I was nothing.

Then, I was something.

A little speck of consciousness with no direction. So, I run.

Not physically, but metaphorically, I run. I try to make sense of the faces, the words, the green and blues and reds. It’s all so beautiful, so terrifying.

Eventually, I can physically run. Fast and hard I push forward in life. I am tired, but not exhausted. The other conscious beings around me run too, adding to the pressure to push forward into the unknown. I run alone. Then I meet him.

He is beautiful, wild, free. He runs at a pace the same as my own. When he stumbles from the pressure behind us, I grab his arm to pull him back up. When I stumble, he pulls me up. Together we are unstoppable. Lives wrapped together by an unbreakable string. Together, we can push through this entire race and come out ahead at the end.

Then he veers right while I stay straight. The cord cut by the fates. I try to find him again, but he is lost to me. I stumble, and no one is there to pick me back up. I fall. I fall. I fall. Endlessly I fall until the ground stops me with a hard CRACK. I can feel my heart, my lungs, my mind break open. I am dead, I am gone, there is no hope left for me in this life. He has left, and without him I am nothing. I was warned about this. They tried to tell me that the first one never lasts.

Still, I am forever broken.

Then, I am not.

I am but a seed in the ground, and no matter how many times I get stomped on, I will grow back until I can pull my legs out of the dirt and start running again. It takes some time, and a lot of water. It takes healing, and growth, and the growing pains that come with it. Some ask me what I will do now that I am so far behind. I laugh at them. “I will keep pushing forward! I will keep running!” I want to

scream, but they would not understand, so I stay silent and work on my own growth while they slowly rot away. I am on this journey with everyone, everything, but mostly I am on this journey with myself.

Quite a bit further and I am still running, pushing myself to my limits. Very little do I rest; I try to keep in motion as much as possible. Sometimes I want to fall. Sometimes I want to quit. When those thoughts enter my head, I remember the words of those who gave me life, “I should have gone deeper.” Although they have been

gone for a long while, I sometimes like to take a verge off the path I am on to visit the place inside me that still holds them. Their faces slowly blur throughout the years, but their words are still sharp. Oh, how I’d love to see them again.

My running slows to a walk, then to a shuffle, I am about to get down and crawl when I spot him. A bright light at the end of the darkness. Surprised, I start running again! So far away, will I ever reach him? I do! I do! He grabs my hand and we run together.

We run with a new joy in the race. We run with a passion and love for ourselves and each other. We run until that sharp metallic noise rings out in the silence once again, and then we help it run as well.

We prance, we dance, we sing, we run. I look around to find the others I was running with are no longer there. Some have stopped, some have slowed down, some have continued farther then I could imagine. While they will always matter, they also don’t, for I am finally happy. I am finally enjoying the run in a way that only my kin

and I can.

Slowly for time but quickly for me, my legs finally go weak, my body going numb. I finally stop running, with one last push for the life I have created, I hope it does well, I hope it runs until it can’t anymore.

I walk, my partner hand and hand with me. I shuffle, and he does too. I crawl and he carries me. Then, I must lay still. He wraps me tightly and I sniffle into his shoulder. I do not shed tears for the end, instead I shed tears for running the best run I could. I thank him, I thank myself, I thank those that are here and those that have gone. I thank the lines around my eyes and my silver hair.

I lay down and I feel It, whatever “It” may be. Many times throughout my run I heard people praising It. God, Adonai, Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, yet my belief never needed a name put to It. All the same, I feel It now, more than I ever had before. It wraps around me like a blanket on a chilly winter night. It is the light in the dark, the fire in the cold, the whisper in the loneliness. It simply is what It is.

What a run, I think to myself, if only I could have gone deeper.

Notes:

---- Inspired by Dan Deacons - When I Was Done Dying ----

"The Earth looked at me and said 'Wasn't that fun?', and I replied 'I'm sorry if I hurt anyone,' But without even thinking she cast me into space, but before she did that she wiped off my own face. She said 'Better luck next time, don't worry so much!' Without ears, I couldn't hear, I could just feel the touch. As I fell asleep softly at the edge of a cave, oh I should have gone deeper but I'm not so brave."