Running Away

You chose to run away.

Everyday you came back home and unpacked that invisible satchel. In that corner went the regrets, the other one was crowded with complaints. Scattered all around you were the remnants of your failures; the true monsters under the bed, waiting to surprise you unwary.

You said nothing. Everybody asked you where you’d been – how was the day – what did you do – who did you talk to and what about? They meant it kindly, unaware that you lived in a world all your own that they could never enter. “Nowhere,” you said. “It doesn’t matter,” you said. “Nothing,” you said.

All day you listened to other people talk. A smile for them, automatic and correct. A nod in agreement, handshake for goodbye, wave for hello, frown for concern, shrug to pass the buck. Questions to signify interest. Cloaks of invisibility are neither rare nor fantastic – you know them as quite ordinary gestures.

One day, you told yourself, you would leave all that behind. The secrets, the lies, the safe silences that left you unsure of your words when you finally let them form in your mouth. The questions, the codes, the stock answers that became transparent bricks of the wall around you.

Then why, now, do you feel abandoned this day? The chains have been cut, it is a liberation, you know. The ropes have been sawn through, you were set adrift, you feel.

A bird in the sky or a lion on the plains – neither; you are you. Solitary magnificence is for other creatures. Human beings live tethered. In yourself alone are you free.

Free to run.

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