I Ran a Race Against My Life

I ran a race against myself,

inhaling the vile smoke of despair,

tasting trouble from my split lips.

My reality was far more savage

than any thriller flick.

As if to mourn the death of all hope,

the sunset rained down on me with its bloody tears.

If horror was my home, then this was my abyss.

And as I reached the top of the anguish hill,

the stampede of panic filled my ears

with my own cries for help.

That was when

I tumbled face first

onto the sickest of truths.

“The end,” I thought, “finito.” Only then

I heard a lilt that caused me

to lift my eyes and look…

I saw

a chiseled face of a man

that struck me as divine

amidst all of that chaos.

His quick gaze caught mine across the space

like a quick hand catching a falling goblet

that was about to break.

He had a breathtaking blue in his eyes,

a surreal light that seemed utterly out of place in my charred world.

Two bluebells blooming in the middle of a bombed-out street.

Two freshwater ponds I wanted to sink into.

Two cool drinks.

I craved to reach out to him

but I was paralyzed by the fear that all this was an illusion.

I was scared that if I moved an inch,

his fragile apparition would simply dissipate.

Yet, as I nestled my eyes in his,

my mind went still and quiet —

the gunfire faded, and the flames cooled off.

He reached out his hand to me; I seized it and…

while my fingers clasped his,

I heard the music of hope,

not forte, just piano, piano —

but enough for me

to feel much stronger and get up.

Hand in hand, we walked as one,

our feet treading cautiously

over twisted metal and

broken glass of my thoughts.

And as we went into the darkness of the world,

I clutched the swollen seeds

of my affection to my healing heart,

afraid they would be stolen by the next explosion.

That never occurred; instead,

I watched how a tiny cotyledon of love

erupted from the gray ashes of grief

and grinned victoriously.

. . .

© Irina Patterson, February 28, 2022

*Image credits here, here, here, and here.

. . .

Thank you for reading, my other stories are here.

Love, Irina.