Bell rings.

Finally.

God, why is everything so heavy?

It’s a heavy day.

The weight goes stumbling down my body, falling off my stomach, tripping over my knees, landing at my feet. My toes can feel the weight.

Anyone could hear it.

STOMP

STOMP

STOMP

in the empty hallway.

Everyone, why is God so heavy?

Why does the spirit inside you seem to sink some days? Why is there a force powerful enough to create the every passion, every thought on the planet- and yet it can’t help me hold me head up in the morning?

Turn a corner.

Abandoned cafeteria.

Turn a corner.

Empty hallway.

Turn a corner.

Vacant stairwell.

Back to wall, sliding down slipping slowly, passively.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Face in hands.

What now? What do I do with this heaviness? What does anyone do?

Drugs numbness tears cuts lonely walks depressing quotes online shopping tears eating starving sobbing thinking burying everything staring blankly seeing nothing tears tears tears?

Is this what it comes to? Is this what happens to life when everything disintegrates and you sit alone in an empty stairwell with a head that is too heavy for a neck to hold up and everything is too numb numb numb to feel except for your toes which are heavy heavy heavy with the weight of the world that sank out of your shoulders into your shoes? Is this what it comes too?!

No.

NO.

Stand up.

Turn a corner.

Empty hallway.

Turn a corner.

Open doorway.

Turn a corner.

Busy locker room.

Noise and chaos and running shorts flying through the air

Did you hear what happened to me today Do want this cookie I only took two bites but then it tasted like woodchips Hey there you are how was your day How are you doing Are you ready for the run it’s in the forest today Aren’t you glad it’s thursday Dang I thought it was friday Will you pass that Look here Tell me that story again?

Put on running shoes

Weight rises from toes to ankles.

Neck hold up head.

Turn a corner.

Open the door.

Step off the dense parking lot into the car.

 Leave the school, this institution of monotony and the stagnation of the soul with brick on brick on brick heavy above you and heavy around you. Leave the school, and the briskest of breezes flows through the open window. Leave the school, and picture the forest that is minutes away from your eager grasp.

Leave the school.

Crunch onto the gravel parking lot.

Step step step out to reunite with the running shorts and quilted conversation floating on the breeze.

Look up at a sky heavy with the color of a spring afternoon and light with the wind of a fall day.

Look out at the trees dripping with colors that have sparked the imagination of poets and plumbers alike, colors that humans have so desired to possess we have given them names and put them in wax and stuffed them in a box and only received a dim imitation for our efforts. But still, we try. We name them

Orange

Yellow

Burnt Sienna

Brick Red

Sun Glow

Golden Rod

Mango Tango

Neon Carrot

And outrageous orange.

Look up at the canopy, and feel the weight rise from my ankles to my knees, to my thighs, to my hips.

Grab a friend, a personality or two, a group of running shorts floating by

Start a conversation, an idea, a plan, a story

Feet crunch on gravel

Now on dirt

Now on leaves and roots and mud puddles and your shoes are a street band of enthusiastic crunching and swirling and splashing and splattering and the color is dripping down from the trees in leaves of all sizes, floating and swirling down, people are reaching out and grabbing Mango Tango and Orange and Brick Red right out of thin air! And your legs are light and strong with the power of a forest and a fall wind and they surge off the ground and you fly fly fly.

Turn a corner.

Dance across a log.

Turn a corner.

Bound through a puddle.

Turn a corner.

Run up a mountain.

The weight lifts up, up, up through my chest, slides up the back of my neck, rises out of the top of my head…

And disappears.                                                                                

I think it get absorbed by the trees. Or maybe one of our conversations got carried away, and took the weight with it. Perhaps God snagged it off the top of my head once I left that brick crust of a building an entered a living crayon box. Who knows. All I know is

This is what it comes to.

Turn a corner.

A rush of branches, a flash of running shorts, a laugh carried off with a gust of wind.

Turn a corner.

Grin.