Feelings I Don't Know How to Say Otherwise. - 7. Run

No one told you. You searched for a warmth in the blizzards, a light in the dark, a flicker in the still air. You went through throngs of bodies, their remains piling up against atop each other, pushing and shoving until they all turned still. You lie quietly, pressed up against all those heated bodies: your spine against a limp arm, your chest against a plaster wall. You breathe quietly but the air rushes forth, screeching between the crevices of your teeth. Your eyes flicker from dark spot to dark spot, trying to see where there is nothing to be seen. You think you hear voices in the next room, but you know the four walls echo with the silence of vacancy. You tell yourself to reign in your imagination, to leash the feral thoughts that snapped and growled in your mind. You think back to the naive days, when you thought you could outrun this awful feeling: a constant grasping at your ankles, slowing down your steps. You ran faster, stretching those hamstrings, widening those strides. You took to the air, in a metal bird, that traversed oceans. But you didn’t stop there, you continued running. You ran through nights and ran through people. You ran past thoughts and ran past warnings. Now you’ve run out: out of people, out of places. The mound of cold bodies lay beside you in your bed as they squeeze you closer to the edge. You turn to face them, because you think anything would be better than nothing. But then they vanish and there is nothing again: nothing but you.

No one told you that you couldn’t outrun your loneliness.