Run
This is my poem in celebration of running.
This is my poem to say out loud,
I’m glad I had trails and shoes.
Glad I had a team and sunshine.
Glad I had freedom.
I am grateful for my brothers.
For Eiger, who was the first to run and the first to love it.
For Quin who made me want to love it,
To all those times he would walk with me to school, walking our bikes rather than riding them
Talking for hours about running and anything else.
I am grateful for my parents.
My dad who worked five days a week to not only sustain, but privilege seven back home.
My mom who wrote the ninety dollar check for me to run on the high school team in loopy cursive.
I am grateful for my team.
My coach who listened, taught, and pushed me every day to become better.
My friends who helped laugh away the pain while sweat rolled down our faces and the cold bit our fingers.
We splashed through rain, trudged through snow, and fought the wind.
We looked out for each other.
Those girls turned the most dreadful moments into the most memorable moments.
There are millions of people who have never understood.
They think running is about numbers, distances, and places.
They think running is about fitness, calories, and fat.
They think running is harsh, tedious, and a punishment.
But running is so much more.
Running is freedom.
This poem is against confinement.
This poem is against numbers.
This poem is against being trapped within yourself.
Running is what freed me from myself.
When I let everyone else define who I was and determine how I felt, I had running.
Running picked me up.
When you run you learn.
You learn about limits, there are no limits.
You learn about strength, tenacity, and ambition.
You learn about pain, pain is only as real as you make it.
You learn to love.
To love the crinkle of paper as you pull out a fresh pair of shoes, taking in the smell, imagining how they will hug your feet during the miles to come.
To love the crowd that is a giant mass of sound,
The thrill of showing everyone you can do the unimaginable.
To love the dirt path crunching under you while the hot sun blinds your eyes, and maybe for just a moment you’ll pause.
To hear the silence.
To feel the silence.
As it moves in the grass and the trees.
This is a poem to say be liberated.
Let your soles pound the ground,
While your heart pounds your soul.
Let the wind fill your lungs.
Let every worry, every stress, every tear, lift and float away like balloons behind you.
Jealousy, anger, grief, blame, doubt, embarrassment, shame, words, insecurity, and pain,
All of it floating away.
Understand I know exactly what I got.
Heavy square black boots strapped to my feet two years in a row.
X-rays, bone scans, blood tests, evaluations.
The raised eyebrow when I said “No, I do not have an eating disorder” to the fifth doctor that week.
My mother telling me to swim, "you never got injured swimming".
I will not stop running.
No matter how many times my bones bend and splinter apart into a jagged line in black and white.
No matter how many times I pass out and wake up by the road with bruises on my face and my teeth chipped.
No matter how many times every ounce of stomach acid is purged out of my body at the finish line.
No matter how many times the doctor threatens me with cancer, insisting I imprison myself with pills.
I will not give up my freedom.
I intend to run.
