(a selection from an unwrtten whole) pt. 2

This is the road that is dark and gray. It stretches forward pushing upward. It is resistance beneath our feet. Women with strollers roll it and workers with boots bash it. This is the road, our response to the earth. These are the fists which pump near the road, front and back front and back. These are the feet that connect with the road. These are the lungs machine-like. He, the runner, long and short. Fists pumping, forward back, feet connecting ground, lungs machine-like. Conquering the road, pushing it backward, disposing of it parcel by parcel. The runner runs and defeats the ground beneath his feet. The runner runs for utility. The runner runs from danger. The runner runs from strife. The road serves equally the runner and the chaser. The chaser, the angry the underprivileged chaser. Wanting to take the day away he wants to take the day. The ground stretches from chaser to runner, drawing a line that refuses a line that resists. Lungs, machine-like, fists, pumping, feet, connecting. Chaser, runner, linked by the gray immovable mass serving dutifully beneath their feet.

Lungs machine-like and fading. Side walk slabs, open spaces with segregating horizontal lines, runner falling past them with step, praying for a finish line. Runner runs, chaser chases, demons between the two fill the void with fire and fear. Crack whip of the head, the runner looks back and back again, the chaser shrinking, fleeting, being enveloped in the road, in the world, in the night, in the gray. The finish line at last and runner ducks around a corner, the darkest silence on the street.

A dark and silent hiding space filled with fear, a pounding heart, and two conspicuous fiery lungs. Closed eyes, head back, back of head cool on cement building blockade. Think of times past, think of brighter days past. On this road, time spent playing boyish games and running and playing in the youthful sun. Laughter and anticipation of warm meals and stories and days shared, friends like brothers, and families too young for tragedy. Fear is fading. Gasps, are fading. The decrescendo, of the percussive heart and the calamity of the body, return to pianissimo. At one with the dark, with the silence. Safety, anonymous, protected by shadow, supported by ground. A return to the road, endless finish lines, and concrete slabs, and buildings with empty rooms or maybe just sleeping souls. A return to the harmonies and rhythms and silences of the city at night, the danger fading like a memory from an empty day, a memory dark and gray.