one marathon

Rain-slicked streets. Stockholm, Sweden. (2007).

***
Treadmill scenery of summer elms and a sky beyond colour my Sunday morning. We pound the pavement at street level, thinning the pack along the length of a single blue line. Left, right ... left, right ... left, right. It's a cacophony of rhythm, a harmony of rhyme.

Twenty miles in, memory and time begin to blend. Missing what no longer exists, the wall of worry hits - through the avenue of Greeks, down to the old brick theatre.

My feet hurt.

Neither first, last, here, nor there ... in this race, I'm somewhere in the in-between. What to do but run on, wrong way against the phantom traffic of the steel-girded, one-way bridge.

Across to the other side, the sun follows through ... and I look down to feel a pair of well-worn shoes.

Take me places, leave me ageless. Even, after the finish line.


Under the needles. Villefranche-sur-Mer, France. (2008).