We were running marathons of impatience.
We were running marathons of impatience. We were slogging through movements, moments, through days, spitting out nonsense just to keep spitting it out, sharks swimming in sleep to stave off death. When we were alone, when we stopped, we didn't know what to do, we feared we might just keep on stopping, so we continued. We knew it could not mean anything. In our marathons, we always envisioned ourselves in the first mile, sprinting up Sisyphean hills. We had no idea how far we had come, could not acknowledge what was behind us. Like Orpheus, we could not look back. We mixed mythological metaphors. How else could we lend an air of the epic to our minuscule struggles against ourselves and our own tangible impossibility. We needed something about ourselves to exist on a grander scale, above the ants in bridge and tunnel traffic, above the swirling topography of our neighborhoods made into airplane patchwork, and above that made into molecules in swirling galaxies above and beneath us, elements shifting from solid to liquid, particles dissipating, the night sky falling, our own hearts failing, trees in the forest, none of this makes a sound.