Escape
— poem
Under sodium lights, my small town breathes,
the green bridge hangs heavy, a Sleepy Hollow dusk.
The river snakes from rocks to dead skin,
a ravine of my present moment. When I run, all pain stops.
A time element breathes with me.
If I run fast enough, my lungs burn like coals,
I can beat the moment, cast past and future
like a sheet, place the present on the shelf, a brass figurine.
Outside time, outside humanity, outside pain.
I glance over my shoulder for the horseman —
he arrives with stories, like crusaders, religions,
armed with tales to make me understand, accept.
Swallowed forever if I’m not careful.
A cape flutters, but I don’t think of that now.
I think of the clock tower, the empty church,
the saloon, the bank robbed by masked Herman brothers.
I cross streets without signals, weaving through the liminal,
interstitial spaces, everywhere.
1:30 a.m. My friends laugh in my girlfriend’s backyard,
sharing stories, sophomoric jokes, bending happenstance.
But I’m gone, running through town,
the boy who must escape. Can’t tell you why, only know
when it calls, I have to go. Like addiction.
Running and drugs both address pain.
I once called running my form of cutting,
not realising as a boy, I used it to numb myself,
exhausting to the point of nothing. Truth comes like an iron anvil —
I am the vehicle. Readers clamber inside, see where I take them.
As a runner, I was nothing special. A 4:29 mile, respectable.
Running was more — a declaration. I am here.
Defiance. I withstand. I designed a portal to vanish pain.
When pain didn’t go, I did.
Running was penance, punishment,
a dark place in exhaustion’s hinterlands.
Where blood spun my heart’s wheel, magnolia bushes, walnut grove,
whooping and beatings. I laughed publicly, cried privately.
What kind of boy gets beat by his mamma?
When I burn, I flee from people, sleepovers, familiarity.
Toward numbness, I break bones, cross the green bridge,
through the dragon’s throat. Trees border creeks,
hang like Christ’s arms over the library. Up Third Street, past my coach’s house,
across the baseball diamond, collecting stars from pavement, stretching, running.
Aloneness is my chokehold, a pattern between thumb and index finger.
Coach’s advice: hold it like a potato chip. I run through cardboard neighbourhoods,
my presence known. Running on the beach, dark, clouds like a bus,
the ocean’s shushing waves. I see myself — a hooded figure, Gray screen.
The ocean, flat, paper-like. Dissonant lines.
I blink and I’m seven, stinging bare bottom.
Blink, and I’m in a bedroom, mother hovering,
her eyes leer like hail, moving to strike.
One more hit, then I’m running over sand,
escaping pain, past, future…placing the present
like a brass figurine back on the shelf.
In the quiet of the early morning, as I run through the deserted streets and along the beach, I am both escaping and confronting my past. Each stride away from familiar places and painful memories is a step toward a fragile peace. In the dark expanse, where the past and future blur, and the present rests like a brass figurine on the shelf, I find a temporary sanctuary from my pain. It’s a relentless journey, a dance with shadows, and a search for solace, where each moment of escape is a fleeting breath of freedom.
