Stretching towards the sun…

There’s something so therapeutic and almost meditative about running for me. I try my best to run everyday, or at least five days out of the week. However, I think my reasons for running vary from day to day. Somedays its about catharsis and stress-relief. Somedays I run as a means of staying fit in the face of an all too sedentary job. But, somedays its anything but altruistic. Somedays its about trying to find a healthy form of self-harm…cause that’s a thing, right? If it’s not a thing can it be? And, can I trademark it? Somedays I run from a place of despondency and self-loathing, a misanthropy turned inward, and I push the pace of the run as a way to bring about a manageable degree of pain that won’t incite an intervention from family and friends, and that won’t bring about a court-ordered residency in a rehabilitation center…so far so good.

But, regardless of the reasons, after a good run I write. Somewhere in the anguished effort to inhale, the wretched hopefulness gasping for air, I find words dancing atop every desperate exhalation, and sentences writhing upon every outbreath. More often then not, what I write in the euphoria of post-run exhaustion turns into poetry. I’m not sure why. Perhaps, the creative juices start flowing when the sweat starts pouring. Maybe that’s why inspiration always smells a little like B.O., or maybe its just because in the whirlwind of writing I’ve forgotten to shower. Maybe that’s a topic for another time.

After a pretty good run yesterday evening, I wrote the little poem below:

What we have lost in speed, we have gained in distance
I will meet you in the gutter dear one
Lie beside my in the clutches of the mud
Sorrow is the soil of our mother tongue
Faith is a seed planted in the black
Hope is what happens in the dark
Stretching towards the sun…

If you enjoyed this blog, please consider supporting my work by Buying Me a Coffee