The Night Runner

The Night Runner

Sarah Soltis

And what if I did?
What my restless bones, rustling like paper, wanted:
To run and run away. If I ran
And hid from the blinding break of day, then
Would that bloodlike, streaming light still pursue me
Chasing, outpacing the stained sheets of my body?
If I run, street by street, will I be cleaned, somehow, by wind,
Made free out here with dawn left back, behind, within?
Would I find rest in the sin, ease in escape
From the cruel sheen that offers a place
To sit and stay, breathe and bask –
I don’t think I want that.
My heart in rebellion repeats:
I don’t want the well-lit table you set, the seat
Carved by a carpenter to dig into my flesh,
Tearing till there is no tissue paper skin left.

But if I did
What I wanted -
If I ran from the candles, the supper, the table, the relentless sun
Still burns in too much three-dimensionality to be outrun
By insubstantial limbs fluent in frailty,
These flammable flakes of flesh afraid at the flicker of too much reality.
I could run and run away, but I know the dayspring has won already.

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Sarah Soltis
Poet & Student

Photography by Zeus Ramirez