51st Street, partial

I ran down 51st Street. I am no runner as my legs know, my lungs know.

I ran and failed to see the faces as people passed by. I didn’t see if anyone, any of the walkers, watched. I could have been alone, running on an empty sidewalk. My friends were running with me. We set out together. Once in motion I barely noticed they were there.

I ran alone. I barely felt the cold on my cheeks. I forgot I held a purse in my left hand. I didn’t notice how long my coat was. My senses dulled as I moved.

I couldn’t even hear the words that constantly run inside my head. Strangely without that persistent inner monologue that runs the rest of the time. It runs while I walk. There are one-sided conversations with friends. Emails half-written. Essays. And then there’s the voice, the critic. (Maybe she’s walking.) For now I am free even of her.

Free from that voice, free from my senses, the impinging outside-world, free from the eyes of strangers or friends. No inner or outer judgments. No feelings.

Alone, just myself.

Only a sense of moving, down the sidewalk. A sense of clarity and lightness and freeness, floating, down the sidewalk.

Lightness, like a feather that might float away, be blown away, with a breath of city wind rushing down that long, straight street carved into, out of the hard concrete.

…

At the door, I stop running. Here are my friends. Curtain’s in three minutes. Good thing we ran.