Runners

We are all runners.
Running from our past,
Our future,
Others,
Even ourselves.
We can, of course,
Never really escape.
No matter how far we go,
Everything lurks in the back of our mind.
Our failures,
Our victories.

Even the cheetah cannot outrun,
Even the wind cannot escape
The jaws of memory.
You can move,
You can travel to a new place;
One where no one
Has heard your name.
And like the cheetah,
You have escaped.
But for how long?
How long until something,
One little verbal or spatial cue,
Reminds you of the past?
Even a cheetah must rest,
And memory travels at the speed of thought.

We have all done our fair share of running,
Perhaps me more than most.
Other have fled people, places, cultures, themselves.
I have fled them all.
True, we can all escape a person,
Disappear off the map and start a new life.
Fleeing from a place is even easier, one must just leave.
Culture is harder, but still possible.
Even a specter of oneself can be outrun,
Assuming you have the will.
But have we truly left that which we can remember?

A cheetah cannot turn and fight, he cannot even run.
He bears the marks of the lions he has run from,
Marks from chases in which he was too slow.
Some have healed over, some have not.
But even those that have lurk beneath the surface,
Waiting to erupt in fresh pain and blood.
They all will, someday.
Someday.

-- Citrakayah

Written September 2010