Running

It was the kind of feeling you get after you’ve run a really, really hard race. You’re half-out-of breath; your chest heaves up and down, and burns like cold fire. Your eyes hurt, your head hurts, your body hurts. Your entire being aches with a throbbing rhythm. And there is nothing that can keep you from feeling like you want to fly.

She felt that way, walking back from the library that night. Mom’d said she could go. No one was in the house. Took the cellphone, her library card, walked out the door. It was a Friday night, quiet and deep like winter. The clouds shifted overhead and the trees breathed deeply, leaves rustling restlessly. Her flip-flops smacked the pavement with a harsh finality.

The library ladies had been kind and smiling. The people there waited for books and dreams to come true. No books just then, though. She could float on air.

So, when she walked past the elementary school, the long way home, the fog called to her restless body. It hung in a thick blanket of sweet smoke, grey and lovely in its solitude, over the field.

Past the fence, over the mini-basketball court. Standing at the edge of a great, sweet abyss. And it was perfect.

Took off her dirty blue flip-flops, pulled out the earphones to listen to the silence. She sunk into the ground, pressed her bare heels against the cool, black soil. She curled her toes into the deep green grass, gripped the soil with her feet. Looked up into the black sky to listen to the night.

And, suddenly, the silence filled her to bursting.

She stepped back from the field, flip-flops hanging loose in one hand. And then she began to run.

Straddle the first few steps. Move from one foot to the other, right to the left, always forward, pumping the soft ground with her feet, into the fog.

It felt like flying, sprinting across the field. The mist parted like water, but she knew she was inside, was a part of it. The night hung dark overhead.

Her feet lifted from the ground, legs pumping forward across the field. She moved her arms, back and forth, a swift, graceful machine, slipping through the fog, running alongside the school. It was amazing.

The end of the field came up suddenly. She stopped. Heart pounding. Chest heaving, up and down, up and down. Throat aching with an unquenchable thirst.

The night slipped back into place around her body, filling in the little spaces, squeezing into her ears and eyeballs. The field was laced with silky fog.

She stood there for a while. The moon rose overhead. The houses in front of her looked quiet and expectant. She breathed in the night once more, and then walked in triumph across the playground, down the street, and home.