Runner at Night (About a Boy)

Preface

I can taste it now. As the sun sets over that green-greyish building. It peeks through the cracks of the blinds, making gold lines across my face. I can taste it. It won't be long now, I think, before the sun is gone and I'm completely in darkness. Then the sadness will really hit me. I’m scared of what might happen. 

The sun is almost hidden now behind those trees backing that green-greyish building. The golden lines across my face are fading. It seems the streets are getting quieter. Maybe the streets are getting sadder. 

When I stop to think for too long I can see him. Ingrained in my skull. It burns. I look at the vanishing skyline and think of how he is probably staring at it right now. Except he isn't thinking of me. hHs mind is elsewhere....on someone else. 

I have that feeling again. To call him or text him, whichever smells less of desperation. 

Just four weeks ago he was so into me. All he wanted was to be in me. After I gave him what he wanted he was nowhere to be found. Just like this soon to be setting sun. 

There is no more sun. It is gone now. Behind those trees. So here I sit, all alone and quiet with my thoughts which scare me more than the sadness I feel when I am alone. 

I could stand up and walk somewhere, but gravity compels me. I've made friends with this spot that I am sitting in. For some reason I feel a strong affinity for it. As if it's known me my whole life. It comforts me. I never want to leave here. I never want to leave this place. Although it saddens me because I know I will have to eventually. If for no other reason than the fact that the sadness in this room is stifling. 

I've picked up running. I prefer to run at night than during the day. It's quiet at night. no disturbances. No one can see me. I am free to run through night's shadows invisible. At night I am no more than shoes hitting dry pavement at high impacts, or a moveable force parting through air, or a series of heavy breaths and dull panting with every step. I am unobtrusive and unknown; except as the girl who runs at night. 

Runner at Night (About a Boy)

I woke up with you in my head. Your voice is the only thing lifting me up right now. You see—I don't think about him until I stop to think about how I’m not thinking about him. I think that’s how it usually happens with most people. It’s been about 12 hours since I thought about him last. I’m making a pact with myself to stop thinking about him permanently; completely erase him from my mind, starting in one hour. 

Today I will do everything I said I would do. Starting with not thinking about him. I now have fifty-nine minutes left. I can think about it all. Every second we’ve ever spent together I can think about all of it. Rehash it. Rehearse it over and over till I’m numb and crying. Fifty-eight minutes. I can beat it to death. Every detail of our nights. Every morning I woke up next to him. The shivers I’m feeling right now as I think about him still. Fifty-seven. I should think about something else. But I can’t. He's addictive or something. How lucky I am though. Fifty-six minutes of pure thought solely devoted to him. I have yet to hardly even think about what will happen when the time is up. What will I do? Who will I think of then? The thought is both comforting and painful all in the same instant. To live in a world where my thoughts aren't occupied by him is unfathomable to me. Fifty-four now. I get the feeling I should do something drastic. Something to remember him by. Something definitive. Perhaps send him an email explaining how I feel. Or call him and hang up. Or show up at his house dripping in tears. I have fifty-three minutes to do something, anything, before I can no longer think about him. I’m feeling uneasy. Anxious and filled with nerves. Slightly consumed with regret. Frustration. Hurt. I'm a little depressed. I feel funny. Like happy but on the verge of tears. I don't know why. Even his name stings. I can’t even think about him without it hurting. 

Fifty minutes. Ten minutes have elapsed and I have not yet moved. Not from this spot. Not ever. I can’t waste even a minute thinking about anything else besides you. Besides him. He told me stuff. He read to me one night. He kissed my chin and my shoulders and my chest. He was gentle. He was kind. Yet, despite all of this, I know there is a beast resting in him. A gentle beast. Forty-seven. Time flies. Literally. Time hardly exists. It just is. When I think of time I think of the wind; pushing leaves and dust in the air through people's hair. I think of how two people's time together is marked by minutes and seconds. Time is so infinite but at the same time she is so constricting. If I had more time I would spend it all with the boy of my dreams who I now only have forty-five minutes to think about. Not enough time. There is never enough time. Not where love is concerned. Time on this 3rd dimensional plane is finite and we are all bound by it. C’est triste. 

Forty-four. The clouds are parting and the light’s coming through. Must be God. Trying to send me a message I bet. Trying to subtly urge me not to do away with myself once this hour is up. Once his memory can no longer inhabit my mind. Forty-three. I wonder how it will happen. Once my time is up. Will he just evaporate like water droplets on a hot day? Just become dust in the recesses of my mind? Will I sweat him out in a feverish frenzy? Will he bleed out from my pores and cut-up dermis when I inevitably take a razor to my wrist? Will I cry him out of my eyes? Will I choke him out? Forty-two. How will I escape him? How will he escape me? 

Will I combust into a white cloud and be swept up to heaven? Will the spirit of his ghost that haunts me float out of my mouth while I sleep? I don't know. It's all possible I just want it to be fast.I know there will be tears; that's inevitable. But I don't want to feel it. I just want to blink and not remember him. I want this eager pain that's been pummelling my heart to stop. I want this angst to be rid of me. I want to smile for real and mean it. I want to cry for real and for once it not be about him. I want to meet a boy and my first thought is not about how he is not you and how he will never be you. Even if he looked just like you. I want to forget all about him. I want to be 16 again. 

Thirty-seven minutes left. Almost half way now. I wonder what you're doing right now. At this exact moment. I often wonder about that. I know he's not thinking about me. If he were I'd know. I'd know because he'd call me. Or text me. He'd find a way to reach me to let me know I’m who he's thinking about. Me and me only. Thirty-six. He’d be romantic. Tell me how beautiful I am and how happy I make him and I'd laugh like a girl. What an idiot. Then he'd stare at me intently, straight into my broken brown eyes, sending electric knives through me with his peepers, and he'd tell me he loved me. Thirty-five. I'm starting to get the shakes now. I don't know why. It must be nerves. Why am I nervous? I can feel them coming now. Here they come. 

Tears. Welcome. I've been expecting you. I thought I'd be crying by the forty minute mark. Thirty minutes ago I didn't even think I could make it this far. Thirty-four. I'm shaking because I know that once my time is up I’ll be by myself. I can't even hide in the thought of you. I can't escape there on Sundays when I have nothing better to do. I can't fantasize after a romantic movie. I can't listen to a sad song anymore and think about you. I am painstakingly alone once this long hour is over. My mind will be void. Just empty space and darkness and a few clouds. But no sun. There is no sunshine up there. I am scared that when I can no longer think of you, my absent mind will become bleak and filled with insanity. I will be alone, inane, and batshit. 

Twenty-nine. If you had to write a book about your life would I even be in the pages? Would you devote a whole chapter to me or was I only remarkable enough to warrant one page? Or would I not grace the pages at all? Was I just some girl? Just another girl whose ears you filled with all of your fears. Plucking my heartstrings with your dull tongue. Just a hole for your heart to get lost in. Digging your deep kisses into my neck. Like a fool, like a girl, I let your fingers linger over my frivolous body. Like a fool, like a girl, I let you let your feelings explode inside of me. 

If I were to write a book about my life you'd fill up half of it. Every page would be laced with your name. I'd write lines about you so much that they'd be pouring out of the book. It wouldn't be able to house the significance of you. You're too abundant. You're too significant. I'm too in love with you. 

Twenty minutes. I think of all the things I can do in twenty minutes. All the boys I could be kissing. All the love I could be making. I can run a mile in twenty minutes. In fact, I can run two. I could be from here to your house in twenty minutes. I can forget about you entirely in twenty minutes.

Nineteen. I wonder how many hearts you've broken. How many have you made miserable from your hard-working numbness? Your diluted perception of the world. Your obnoxious realism. Your isolated, fucked up mind. Your curiosity and wandering nerves. Your obsession with the 70s. I love that about you.

Seventeen. I want to go to California again. I want to leave tomorrow. I want to hop on a plane and just go and be gone. I know at the back of my mind there'll be shards of you lingering and I’ll be secretly wishing you'd follow me there. Onto a beach. Feet through the sand. Straight into the ocean. In my mind, I go to California. And my blood is on fire. My spirit is teaming with life. And for once I'm not high off the thought of you. 

Fifteen minutes. My heart’s all hollowed out now. Nothing left in there I swear. I’ve reached a point of paralysis and unfeeling in the past forty-five minutes. But I can taste lucidity now. Just barely, but she’s there. And pretty soon my memory of you will be damp and unfamiliar. 

Thirteen. Do you ever think about nostalgia? I feel her all the time. In the night time. In the early hours of the mornings most. When I’m awake and thoughts are drifting. She crawls in through my ears and eyes. She's a feeling and nothing more. Yet, how can a feeling so intangible feel so real and be so coercive over my bones? How can she force such tears out of my eyelids? How does she have the right? Eleven. Part of me hates her but part of me loves her all the same. Without nostalgia, I would've forgotten about you long ago. Without her, my heart wouldn't be filled with such angst and passion for a boy who barely cares that I exist. Without her, I wouldn't gaze at the past with keen, adolescent, romanticized eyes. Without her, everything would feel black and grey. Because of her, though, I see your eyes are blond, and your cheeks are sage green, my skin is black, and my eyes remain wild and wide. 

Ten minutes. I'm trying to think of the first night we spent together: 

I’m leaving your apartment and I’m covered in hot gossip and twenty-year-old, girlish lust, and I can’t help but think about when I might see you next. We’re both so busy with our schedules. For me: school, work, hobbies, friends, life, bad texter. For you: school, work, hobbies, friends, life, bad texter. I realized something though. It was a feeling that cropped up just before you kissed me 40 minutes ago. It's a feeling I hoped would wait a while before rearing its head. But here she is -- I like you. How juvenile of me. It's been a while since I’ve had a crush on anybody. I forgot what butterflies felt like.

8 minutes. I still remember you calling me beautiful. It was the morning after. You kissed me a lot. You pushed my hair back. And then my heart was racing. I think I’ll let that memory go now. 

7 minutes. I wish you were mad about me. Some days I wish you’d call me. Write a song about me even though you’re not a writer. I wish I knew you better. I wish you knew me better. Cause then you’d know I’m totally gone with the wind. Quite possibly the girl of your dreams. Oh, and I read Bukowski too. 

I was drawn to your sporadic madness. You didn’t know I had it in me. But, I guess we’re both a little crazy. That’s why I was into you. You had your neurosis. And, you had your existential crisis that I walked you out of. 

Thinking these thoughts down has concretized my acceptance of the fact that I am utterly and unabashedly obsessed with you. But only for five more minutes. Then the totality of you, your form, your soul, will turn to dust in my head. How lovely that will be for the both of us. 

Four minutes. Everything about you moves me to thrills. I wish I could be laced in you for just a bit longer. I feel foolish spending even an hour lallygagging, musing about a boy. So I will sit with these sour sentiments for three more minutes and watch as your love melts off my face. 

3 minutes. I’m becoming more indifferent towards you as the minutes peter out. 

2 minutes. I unfollowed you from Instagram. Both accounts. 

1 minute. I wish you would've kept your promises...and cooked me dinner like you said would. 

30 seconds. I know you now. In retrospect, I suppose we were bound to fall apart. Guys like you always retreat in some subtle fashion. And I always come-to in a puddle of tears. Nevertheless, I was meant to know you; I don't know why yet, but you warmed my heart for a time. 

Ten. It takes one hour to get you out of my system. 

Nine. An hour for you to be a dream to me. 

Eight. Sayonara, dreamboat. 

Seven. I’m sending you on a permanent vacation 

Six. In my head. 

Five. I bid you a warm and comforting goodbye, forever. 

Four. In a moment you’ll be a dream.

Three. And, in this dream, we’re staring 

into each other's smiles.

Two. The whole ride down... 

One. 

To darkness.