This year

If only I could run without knowing. Without feeling. Mostly without knowing. To be oblivious to the pain, the self consciousness, the shortness of breath. To focus only on the rhythmic slap slap slap of my feet pounding on the sidewalk. I want to run to forget, really, to run away - to run away from the pounds and the problems. It is fear of the unknown and anxiety to reach said unknown. Run toward it, run away from it. It would be an achievement to run at all. My body, my mind, my soul, they are too broken.
Slap slap slap slap. Nothing else.

My lips twitch. I wet them with the tip of my tongue. When they became chapped, I don’t know. Something stirs within me. I don’t know what it is or where it came from. Sort of like the chapped lips, I guess.

I want to run and I want to write. This will be the year of running and writing. That’s all I want from life right now. I want to go. I want to move. I want so much. I want to run toward it and I want to hide from it and I want to write about all of it. But things just don’t seem to flow ever. This will be the year of practice. Practice my endurance. The endurance of my legs and of my mind.

He stood in the rain because he wouldn't smoke in the car. He stood under a narrow ledge that hardly kept the dampness from his hair. The cigarette continued to glow. He had come to pick up the children, who are all fully grown. He wasn't allowed in the house because mother was there. His presence would provoke questions, a full scale interrogation. I didn't blame him for standing in the rain. Who wants to unwrap the sordid affairs of an infidel but those who have been cheated? So he stood in the cold rain. The water dripped down his face, which remained unchanged. As weary and as vacant as ever. A changed man challenging the tempest. A man with a passion for all that is wrong. A man seeing himself as too wise and too in control. A man in desperate need of being broken.