Cloudy Day for a Run

By Megan Nicholson

I have felt consciously, emotionally asleep, wanting to stay awake for some unknown purpose other than to be away on these last couple of Saturday nights into Sunday mornings, and not let another day pass to further the timeline of distance between the last time I saw you until the unknown day when I might remember how certain wisps of black hair fall in a light breeze. The only way I know to break the wheel of the week is to run.

Routine is wheel. Putting keys in the back pocket of my tights, and quickly patting the small of my back in five minutes, when I worry I’ve forgotten my keys again. Tying the drawstring of my running tights tightly enough to fit a phone for thought-muting music, but not tight enough to induce cramping. The motion of my knee pulling my leg up to kick the pavement behind me feels like a wheel. Like the cartoonish spin of legs from Sunday morning cartoons.

I don’t even know how I got from my apartment to the river. I’ve unknowingly blacked out and created the first wormhole in, of all places, Boston, and it’s only accessible to me. Beat that, Harvard students.

Gray, repetitive analog keyboard notes wither in my ears and in my mind. I feel memories and the present switch back and forth with each second-spliced keynote. From a warm golden hued light, shadows crossing the blues of my eyes staring into smiling brown eyes, to the stark pale light of my hair pulled back, snowflakes whistling through the orange fabric of this sweatshirt.

I don’t know how to run on an empty mind.

The riverside has whitecaps today, drifting soundlessly along the Charles River. Winter is something I know how to feel well. My sixth grade teacher sat me next to a window he kept open all year round, and I grew to know that when winter hits, you just let the numb take over the veins of your body, and let your heart beat it through until the three o’clock bell rang. I did not learn what you do when you want the winter to let your heart beat numb as well.

The thing is, I’m used to spending my time like this alone, just running along the river, past the occasional fellow runner, for a few miles, then home, to a brick-walled apartment slightly warmer than the outside, and keeping it silent. I am not used to when I have had a home created within my home, and I now know I will stand on fake wooden plank floors, where instead of hearing your hum, I will hear the ringing hum of my old, but still working fridge. I guess that’s motivation to stay out on a run, knowing you are worlds away, humming unwillingly away from my grasping arm pulling you into my cold bed, to entangle my freezing legs playfully into yours while you squeal about how cold I am! Silly girl! Come here, I will make you warm.

I knew a happy song once, but it all sounds gray.

Megan Nicholson (she/her) is a writer trained in legalese, academia and plain creative fun. You can find her settled in at the Boston Public Library, running to a smoothie shop or painting up a storm in Boston, MA. You can even find more of her writing forthcoming in miniMAG and The Amazine. If she’s not studying for her J.D., she’s on Instagram and Twitter (@nicholson_26).