dashing dashwood

came home from an exhausting day at work and forced myself to shower and go out for a walk.

the weather called for it. my heart ached for it. my skin yearned for it.

so i dragged my sore and empty body out into the temperate world, hauling it, one scuffling heel after another, down the long cemented trail of the canal path.

and even when the breeze grew chilly teeth and the sky glowered gray i refused to turn back, relishing the gnawing at my bones.

besides, moving was better than sinking

i understand now why marianne always chose to go walking right before a storm.

i've been slipping into tears easily lately, like old sweaters stretched into threadbare blankets.

but today, with the wind whipping and the rain falling in a frenzied mist my tears were more like bread crumbs, leading me to a house inside myself, owned, not by a witch, but by a scrap of feral happiness, a god with howling wolves in its throat.

and i ran

for the first time in a long time i ran.
my ratty flats flapping off my heels, scarf flying, cold air biting, rain stinging, heart soaring, limbs aching, lungs splitting -
splitting open to offer my atrophied and putrescent chest to the tempestuous november gods.

i ran.
and i healed.


and marianne must have known. known that this is what happens when you go out looking for yourself with lanterns, that the bitter rain and wind will offer you a moment of agonizingly sweet pain and release. an exhilirating distraction, a release gifted to you by the sublimity of Nature.

i was healing in that brief moment. i was powerful. i was free from everything.
i was running with the storm.
i was running.

INVICTUS - William Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.