She’s a runner, meaning
she needs to run. She needs
new shoes every three
months, keeps mechanics
loose and flexible. She
runs every morning, clears
her head to the muffled
sounds of fog, distant trucks
running highway miles,
crickets cold and cacophonous
like Coltrane’s signature
solos. She runs, wakes
the dark early, touches her
arms, feels her fingers along
flesh where bruises left their
plantation deep, prays the nerve
still reacts under pressure.
No sensation, memory unlocks
this kind of hurt lives
deeper than fingers, deeper
than flesh waking to thoughts
of the horror of being in love,
breath relenting. She wonders
how such infection could
come her way, how years
of being of no account could
ever be cauterized. She laces
up, stretches, running as fast
as she can, out-running every
doubt chasing mistakes kicked-
up, choking, knowing ghosts
can’t run as fast as she can.
One of these days she will run
far enough to see that she won’t
have to look anymore over her
shoulder. Then she will know
it’s time to stop running, time
to be safe in the standing stillness.
Marc Meierkort is a writer and educator who taught high school English for 19 years. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (B.S.) and National-Louis University (M.A.T.), and he currently lives in Chicago’s suburbs. He also attended Columbia College Chicago, where he studied under the poets Maureen Seaton, Paul Hoover, and Connie Deanovich. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he recently had poems published by Spectrum, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Buddy, a lit zine, Gravitas, and In Parentheses. 