running

And I think I will sleep

when you leave with your dad in the jogging stroller to run the track behind the high school.

It is cold and foggy and July. You will beg to get out and run too. Daddy will let you and he will be surprised at how fast you are.

I'm sure I will curl into bed again as soon as you're gone - it is not yet 8:30 on a Saturday morning - and I will return myself to dreams I was wrested from a short time back, return finally to a peace that though it's eluded me for the last three years is always just around
the next corner and when I catch up with it I will reach my hand out like toward a lover at an airport arrivals terminal realizing all at once how much I took for granted, weeping for joy and our reunion.

But instead, when the door closes and it's quiet, just me and the cat, I reach for poetry, read it aloud to hear my own voice. I open my journal to pen these lines. It's not that I'm not still exhausted, or that I don't miss that state of my life, the one from my dreams from before you arrived wide-eyed and blank with hope. On the contrary, I am desperate, depleted, which somehow explains why I imagine I can hear the gravel rolling under your garage sale sneakers, Daddy letting you pass him, and you, going by like a blur.