A Sprinting Realization

“A Sprinting Realization” By: Erickson

         The structure was a twist of glass, spiraling to God, and hunkered with red and brown stone, that made one envision a humble, yet well-to-do home. The grand building was a University gym, and it held two cars in its lot. One beat up and bullied golden thing, from the 80’s, and then a silver anonymous victim sat in the other corner. Like a boxing match, the two fighters opposed each other in opposites of the ring. I walked past them, a referee too occupied for the bigger fight, to call out any foul play.

    I ascended stony and out of place steps, strode to the door with a bulking gray pack. The bag was as big as myself, and I met that face, that body, in the glass of the front door. I pulled. The handle didn’t budge, neither did the door.

          A sheet of paper on a thin metallic tube announced a later opening. Some holiday. But there was always some holiday. I was here early and instead of my golden medal and deep appreciation – my puppy dog eyes batting at tired yet youthful student workers, to sucker the feelings out of them – I was turned away. Like a vagabond.

            I turned around. I called the fight. The shiny victim car had lost, no red herrings. I entered my vehicle and left.

            I contemplated myself in the rear-view mirror and eventually found my legs running to the park. I breathed in a smooth and esteemed airport-lounge air. Cool crescents continually renewed below my nostrils. I clenched a glove to wipe a leaky nose on my freckled, yet white arm. I ran past skewered yet rich streets, journeyed a maze of sidewalk that held their gray feet at sleeping apartments.

            In the distance, over the shoulder existed an open gate. I pivoted, my racing boots squeaked, and I turned at potted plants that stared down at fire lanes and carefully tiled brick crosswalks.

            I peeked my head at the gate and dropped my face. A twisting and dark trail marked a new entrance to the park. I slid and stomped with my heals as I descended. Vines twisted down alongside this evil gutter.

            I lived, breathed and existed at the park for a moment. Running, reading, and losing selfish thoughts.

            There is something about running that makes one dial in on the beauty around them. I remember being 16, my poor mother screaming day and night – throwing things. The lack of food in my body and lack of sleep made me hallucinate. I dreamed of art in broad daylight – getting stuck sometimes. I have written a story about getting lost in clouds. Written words, painted pictures, and chicken scratch were my heroine. Monstrosities in the back of my brain, memories that didn’t fit frames, were towers of cards. The moment I held a pencil- like a friend, the skyscrapers plummeted upon my notebook paper. It was my art, my world. But even then, we all need a day job; mine was running as fast as possible to the first signal light. The intersection blared its colors at me every night. I worked late. A getaway from the internal shame my mother tried to place on me. Her attempts tried and mostly succeeded.

            But running helped. The lack of breath choked my eyes into seeing mirages at every slanted sidewalk. My roaring limbs made me look externally and not just worry about myself – my greasy hair and skeleton body. The breeze made me feel potential, the breeze got rid of the “personal”. Feelings were brutal things for a young man. One day I would be out of that abusive place, and now I was. Running made me realize truth when I really needed it. But I stopped. I had ceased running all together until this moment. Why on Earth had I stopped?

            My jacket unleashed and unlatched like a wedding dress at the end of the night. Out puckered my pale skin, contrasting the darkness of my attire; a deep navy-blue muscle tank top that shimmered black in the sun.

            I mushed the grass and continued. My boots became licked with sand.

            I turned around, noticing a woman and her small child. The woman wore a pink backpack with strips of reflective silver. The young girl wore all white, an innocent cloak for now. She cried. Her face twisted upside down, a constant moan of discontent slipped from her lips. The mom kept her stare straight ahead.

            I gripped onto the bar and dangled. I’m not alone.

            Yes, the woman and her child had left, my own head morphed the time with my selfish incoherent thoughts. But still, not alone.

            Not for the baby ducks who swirl in one section of the pond feet away, I am not a poet. Not the tweeting in the air, the grass breathing beneath me; for I am above it. Not for the airplane that lands in the distance, or the leaf blower and its servant a mile away.

            I am not alone for on the bar I do my pull-ups on, exist bits of dew, who dangle and mock. When my palms touch the metallic blue and cold cylinder, three drops slither themselves down my white-flesh arms. Streak them, as if the bar cried into my embrace.

            My arms stretch and the bits of muscle contract and let go, bundle and release. Then, I walk to the bench to record the brief history of my morning at the park.

            “Geese, black heads with gray ribbed bodies. White under bellies approach. They almost surround me, an ambush, then they journey past. Mother Nature does not hold grudges against me today, instead she highlights an aspect of my life that needs attending to, like a garden that is losing its color. Their quiet honking, even in a pack of 10, are only murmurs. My ears pick at a baby honk once every two minutes. They snip their beaks at the grass, hunker low to not be doves, and rip and rip. Their tail feathers rotate and shake at the buffet. Rip and rip. A dance to the Sun God who created their meal, even as the clouds shave the rays of light into nonexistence.”

            I wondered if geese were social animals, and then I came to a realization that had me pack my things.

            The baby girl and her mother returned and played in the distance, the baby’s dress smeared with green crescent marks, and dirt that circled smiling eyes. The geese stayed connected like a full Connect Four board. Diagonals and lines shifted together under silent squawks. And I saw myself, with a book and a pair of headphones half eaten at.

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Thanks for reading.

~Erickson