running, running, running!

Caught in a standstill on the green, she checks the phone number scribbled onto her left forearm in marker, moist with morning dew. She adjusts her cotton-white shirt against the humidity, amidst the crowd mimicking an immediate evacuation. The campus grows empty, the town appears sleepily silent. Yet, last night was a ball. Her boots were beaten and her thighs ached from dancing from partner to partner until she found him. She peeks amongst the heads of students before exasperating an aching exhale, with no sign of his broad brown frame and bushels of dark hair in sight. 

She picks at her stiff curls bunched into a knot when, finally, the man presents himself at the marble steps. An act that stoops him at their level, but illuminates him among the rest. He is wrapped in the golden light breaking across the torn lawn of green, reminiscent of riotous excitement that only the ground will remember. Still, he glows and people follow. The runners are too taken away by his impromptu speech, his parting words, his final gift. His audience continues to close and gather towards him, pressing shoulders and grazing fingertips. Shared moments with strangers while the rest of the world dawns awake. Their soles sink into the familiar shapes of footprints, but unlike the earth, their spirits cannot hear to listen - perhaps because of his distracting musings.

As the marble warms and the clouds part to expose the day, she starts stuffing her toes snugger into her sneakers. The crowd ripples into a wave of movement, the motion guiding her body down into the welcoming street corner, the roads perfectly prepared for this demonstration of beautiful, bittersweet loss. 

The taste of summer in the air wets her tongue, sweat blooms quickly about her body. The damp heat teases a sweep of rain, but these runners had to work for it – it was a race after all. 

Through the town was a breeze, but the mountainous terrain soon dissolves the crowd into the hot concrete. Less scuffs scrape against pavement and more sneakers dart for shade, hiding within the comfort of whispers and shadows. The man of the hour protects his place in the lead, his head bobbing and muscles repeating the tradition of movement. His tanning skin blots with red as his exposure prolongs into the broad daylight. 

She’s keeping up, not batting an eye to those amateurs dropping like flies, and picks up her pace to meet the pack. Her heart becomes fiery and anxious to not fall back, to not get left behind. Adrenaline soaks her sore body and a memory, out of a mess of fading paints, plasters her vision. The image of children trailing behind one common man, happily running away from home, leaving behind the grounds they once stood. 

Now, he runs and runs fast, his sprint only strings along a strong few. It’s quick, so quick the heat flashes cold into her eyes, her vision of him gaining and losing as he dashes the neighborhood hills up then down, up then down. Until, the hour strikes noon and the town is quieter, emptier. The rural accent now a reality.

The man has gone. 

Slowing into a gasping stop, she releases huff after huff, the sound resonating flatly onto the barren road. She has come running home sooner than she thought. Needing a drink, she disturbs the small deserted house of her own making, its ownership passing through a line of academic women attending the University, generation after generation. Working the door handle just right, she wonders if she will always return here, a place she cannot escape, reliving traces that are not her own. 

The wood creaks, moaning at the discolored shoes on her feet, and she goes for the new fridge in the old kitchen. The countertops of the sink and the island gather dust which blooms in the sunshine piercing through the cloudy window glass. The fridge is empty besides the usual necessities; the market comes tomorrow. She takes the whole jug of sweet juice and paces the dim living room to cool down. 

Her eyes fall onto the chest at the bottom shelf of the television stand. It had been another odd some of years since she last trekked memory lane, so she sits herself, cross-legged, onto the stiff floor and flips open the golden hatch of the brown box. There are only a couple of photos, each revealing peculiar pictures.

Film after film, it is a woman from her bloodline, drenched in sweat, crowded amongst victorious students, at the finish line. Their faces are all neutral, as if they had completed this race before. The photos become older, less colorful, more fragile, like a forgotten telltale. Except, the picture of her aunt. She, too, is neck-in-neck with some common man, her head turned towards the camera, embodying all the same, down to the sweat on her forehead and the shirt soaked to her back. 

The box falls with a thud, her family scattering before her on the ground. She leaves her trail as she rises, stumbling towards the door. 

It’s a stampede, now. Countless heads bound up the hill to run through the next. The wave of people shaking the earth shocks the breath from her chest, begging her to live in this moment, as she struggles to find her footing. Despite this endless race, the pursuit for the man persists. All her mind can muster is what she must have left behind that morning. 

Her final stretch back up to the university stretches every last muscle in her aching body, her feet sticking to the thick asphalt beneath her. Still, she must move, she has to know. The sun, though, distracts her efforts, beating harder against her brown skin, glowing with sweat, waning another silent warning. 

Her knees shake and buckle as she approaches the grounds from which they once stood. The campus tranquil in a devastating beauty, as if something had happened in broad daylight without a single soul to protect it.

Then an ancient door from the grand marble building opens. Only a few figures saunter calmly in meager strides, while one man younger than the rest, the one with a bushel of dark hair and beautiful shoulders, falls behind. The small group is older and wiser to another victory. At a standstill, the boy gazes over the green until he appears to discover her heaving body, planted in the soil.  

What it is they all had decided, she will soon have to live.