When the realization
finally hits you
that there are things
you can't outrun
you will want to lay
your body
on the pavement of a deserted
street at midnight.
Splay your broken body
like chalk outlines laid
in the line of danger that's
already passed.
You will come to know the
black sky at midnight.
You will know the warm,
black expanse of asphalt under you,
you will know the
boundless nothing
and the promise of
something,
you will know the way
that surrender turns on all the taps.
Will wring you dry.
When you give up the
chase, you will know
the ways that soaking
in the danger
while lying open to the
heavens
will only put a wedge
in your heart to keep it open.
Don't run.
No matter the ways you
try
you will still only ever
feel
everything.
It is true that there
are things you can't outrun.
Like ocean waves in the
middle of the ocean.
Thunderstorms.
Bacteria.
Like the way the air
carries the atoms of dinosaurs,
of smoke, of gunpowder,
of bombs,
into our lungs.
Like the way we let
destruction beat our hearts like war drums.
Like the way we smell
of babies,
of spring breezes, of beautiful
anyway,
there are things you
can't outrun, like
this life.
It makes breathlessness
an art form.
Makes marathons a way
of being
so we keep running,
believing answers will
be somewhere in the next mile
until these things will
stop you
like cars on I-95, they
will stop you
in the middle of the
highway
for no fucking reason
except to survey the
wreckage.
You stop running when
you realize that you are the wreckage.
That you are the
traffic
and you are the
accident
it will take your
breath away.
This poem is not meant
as apology.
I keep trying to write
it like forgiveness
like moving on
like looking the past
in the face and not blinking first,
but the words drop like
sorry.
Like secrets, like
whispers, like tears,
like no one ever told
me the ways feelings
would rise in my body
like smoke.
Fill my lungs like I'm
burning from the inside out,
this gutted cathedral,
this ransacked temple,
this body that burns
into emptiness that envelops,
these words are not
apology, but story.
Not apology, or
breaking or broken,
it is true that you
can't outrun the burning.
That you will want to
lay yourself down on the asphalt at midnight
to soak in the warmth
left over from the day.
It is true that you
can't outrun the blisters
that are forming on
your feet.
Can't make your feet
strike the pavement more softly.
Can't lose the things
you carry with you.
Stop running.
Let the footsteps you
left behind be absorbed
into the unforgiving
places,
your power
is here in the standing.
In the not blinking
first.
This body
is the home you must
always come back to
so we'll stand in the
smoke.
We'll touch the ashes.
We will witness the ways
we must burn ourselves
to the ground.
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