Running Home

Running home,

fear like rocks

jagged in the stomach.

My heart plummets again,

internal whodunit,

lost something

but still don’t know what,

just feeling the void, a creeping shadow

seeping oil mixed with blood.

-

Running home,

beneath an encroaching night sky,

bleeding a gentle red as the sunset climaxes,

swallowing the street whole,

the street-lamps leak blood

onto the sleeping bodies below,

drugged out again, trying to escape.

-

Running home,

I dig the hole I’ll later

fall into,

I’ll try to wait for panic to subside,

eventual relief is shattered like weakened glass

and no level of heat can draw the fragments back together.

-

Running home,

my legs numb by now from running

to nowhere,

I never had a home, I always

chased the feeling

of a single place of peace.

Now on the precipice of nothing,

I accept my

failure, my bleeding knuckles,

blackened soles of my feet,

all give up.

-

Running home,

no more, instead

collapsing on the street,

all ambition only paved the way for pain,

my indecision

like a prison of my own design.

My bleeding heart weeps only for me,

I burned every other bridge.

-

Running home,

but there’s no home,

I run until

I’m merely lactic acid,

burning,

spitting vitriol,

same as it ever was,

it all remains my fault,

too weak to fix things

accepting the puddle of

mud that I sit in. What

kind of man am I?