Run.

everything black: capris, top, jacket. sunglasses, hairband, gloves.  

it’s 38 degrees, a wind up river a cloudless day. revolving door, glasses down, inhale, go.  step jump step step puddle.  bright blue bright sky bright wind sun light, lit.

down mass ave dirt swept cold exhaust teeming with jackets and shoulders up against   ears.  wrappers, their insides shine like tin touch the ground alight, descend.  keep going, go.

stoplight red green, a faded crosswalk a pot hole another.  dump-truck the sweet stench the cream mercedes the man who doesn’t see his light turn green, HORN!!  quick steps. one two three!  over the street under the bridge the water close, calm.  too much breathing heart is racing past the busy the buzz.

it is calmer here.  the river under pads of snow everything frozen everything still, save for the runner in the orange cap the girl with the green wellies the lone cyclist. 

frozen puddle frozen footprints frozen tree limbs to the tippy-top.  be light, be easy, be steady.  old man squinting through fogged glasses looking down river.  is he smiling at this day and betting on better ones? I toss a smile that meets him there and I keep going past shadows making shapes past shapes making shadows.  a boat house boats hauled out standing like soldiers like sea tombs like stones in silence, winterized.  

breath come easy.  BU bridge wearing graffitied graffiti, workers on scaffolding in helmets wearing accents as thick as their sweatshirts as thick as their skin.  I touch the underbelly I see the soles of their feet I am running on wood planks on ice and the city is melting behind me like a giant icicle and inside my head is thawing almost there in that small white space it is all pulse now.  Two more bridges lone stretches smiling at brake lights at cabbies at railings at reeds at the river on my right.  a footbridge and into the sunlight sparring shadow sparring space glasses fog adjust check time i could keep going forever probably.  turn.

a three-legged dog a baby bjorn a young mom a four-legged man oh, wait.  he’s wielding leki trekking poles on dry pavement never can be too careful on your left...on your left....foot full of snow heaps of snow a sock of snow.  pass.

the sun at my back I play a game I race my shadow I almost win I’m almost home.  The city is beautiful from here.  I think of words for what I see words are good for saying what things are but sometimes cannot function for what things aren’t.   

i feel the dampness under the layers now; my lower back my shoulders my neck the in-between of my fingers my legs are pink my bangs stick to my face my breath is round and satisfied. I am present.  I have lived this run out like yarn like a ball of yarn unwinding unwrapping rolling revealing relieving reliving.  I am alive.  I run.  I ran.