running

Catharsis was the line & story I was going to sell to the pretty thing.

I met a stranger last night, from the northern country. The rain fell, and as her husband took a leak in the restroom, we talked marathons, which we agreed, takes a certain sort of soul to like, with all the dull discipline and rigid routine required to hone a body for brutal, boring, paced running.

"I love running, though," she said, "I love just opening my front door, and going, and I don't know where I'm going, but I just go."

"I love that." She meant the stuff of long drives, aimless evening wanders, & meaningless sex with strangers you briefly think you vaguely understand, but never will truly know.

Her husband returned.

"Do you love that, darling? Running takes me away from you, do you love that I run?"
"Of course I love that you run. Look at that body that comes back."

And they kiss.

I bid them goodnight, and close shop.


-- 


Wandering the streets, towards a way home, I think about Catherine who fell asleep waiting in bed, at home. 

I think about all the Catherines, and all the souls that didn't crave going home to them. Catherine with her pretty face and her slowly shaping body, which is lovely because she has been trying. She deprives herself of daily simple joys, and pushes her vessel, so that one day, a man will come, and sweep her up into his strong arms, and take care of this little grown princess, and she won't have to worry about a thing at all, and simply play, with the children, and make food, and wait all day.

I think about Catherine who wakes for a sliver of a moment from her sleep, warm in the security of bodied company, and her sleepy happiness which brings my mind no ease.

I think about crawling into bed and fucking Catherine, and donning the movements of this man that she craves, and truth be told, she doesn't care if you're pretending, as long as it looks just like the real thing in her dirty romance novels and she never has to catch on, like she thinks she is some trophy you'd go through the effort of courting and lying to, in order to fuck, as if pretty girls weren't everywhere, as if there weren't genuinely kind, pretty girls in the world, who were capable of real love, who you wanted to make love to.

Love, and I think of other souls as I am slipping in quietly through my door.

I drop the things. I unbutton my shirt, slip from my clothes, & I am naked in the dark hours of the morning. All the stars are out and stark-bright, post-rain. I think of wet pavement under streetlight.

I find an old t-shirt and pull it slow over my head, and close, onto my body, and it is cool and smooth, and soft as tenderness. I don't think of bitter things, but of the way the loveliest souls smile, as they give in to the happiness that sweeps them. I roll the legs of my sweats up, and finish dressing. The world is asleep, so I slip out again.

The silence of houses and the moon. 
Catharsis, and I am not chasing it.

I go, and the feeling overtakes me.