Pace

SNAP and you're running down a street where the pavement cracks between there and here, where your breath actually matters: the maxing-out of the windpipe, the siphon of air to your lungs. Run with her locket clammed in your palm, with the wash of ocean swishing in your ears: a flush of sizzling grills and vendors, of babies wailing in strollers. No succor for you or the others with whom you run, a thinning mass that will follow the soles of your sneakers. Lithe Beatie. Rhein in stride. Your legs in tune with theirs from the gun but the treads of your feet beating through the pavement somehow, thumping deep into a layer of earth where sound begins to fade, gravity yanking each footfall but your body yearning for more than gravity, for a resting place. Down where you'd sleep with a mouthful of sod, with slugs crawling over your thighs. No pain, Roderick. No prayer whispered for you this Sunday, a morning bereft of wafers and wine. But you smell other foods here. Hotdogs and godly meats. Sirloin. Chicken. Sausages daubed with mustard and kraut. The grease that leaks from such creations. And wings down below, pigeons necking for pretzel and fry. A sort of Thanksgiving for them, for those who doze on stoops. The crowd is so concentrated here at the beginning of the race, where the sidewalks are filigreed with faces of family and friends. Hooting. Waving signs. In a few strides they welcome you, wish you luck, bid you farewell. But your mind is November breathe and breathe and a tingle down to your ropy genitals, to thighs smeared with Vaseline. You will chap and chafe. A nativity of blisters will burn between your toes. Strange bruises might bloom behind your knees, two moons, like eyes with the blood blown out. But at this moment and this one and this one, you feel so light, so naked, with a vane of feathers pinned to your ankles. You feel like a banner aloft on currents of sound, like a prince that caravans on legions of hands. Hands that are not really for you at all, but for others. Hands that are for themselves, mostly. Look at them weaving up the sidewalks, sleeves of white and blue and red. Eyes that watch from coffee shops and diners, from fast-food booths. And maybe she is also out there, your mother shouting gems of wisdom to the bobbing heads. So many of these runners will dehydrate or snap a tendon. So many will pull a hammy and pack it in. Stitch seethe stitch. Stitch seethe stitch. Now is always the time when it begins. When your sinews release. When your brain in its crystal skullbox reduces each thing to its essence. Things to distract you from changing your rhythm and wind. A balloon incessantly wiggling toward the sun. Leaflight drizzling through the canopies. One thousand shades of brown. And suddenly you're not who you are but someone else, and if you keep up this pace you'll not even be that someone else, not even be human

Km 1

anymore. If you can remain in this state one of these times you'll crop Laskey, Laskey who gallops the hills. You'll sprint away from his eyes with some durable force pumping through your legs, through woven nerves and ligature, the bones impacted, the muscles loose beyond their own belief. Then you'll be lighter than gallant Laskey. Lighter sweetmeats and heart. Lighter legs. The hollow bones in your tarsals. Laskey that dwindler, who saves his feet until the thickest crowd assembles. You want to crop him. You want him so small behind you that you could pick him up in your hand, a bobble-doll held in your palm. Little girls hold dolls and watch you blur while their older sisters eye them knowingly. Some of those sisters as old as you are, their lips at the cup of their twenties. How you desire them even while you stitch seethe stitch, some late teen yielding a lilac scent, her hair twining through your fingers. You run down...