Ruby Marguerite Carlson

Out of Mist, Away from Home

Ruby Marguerite Carlson

Walk fast when you’re lonely; let your heart beat until you cannot breathe; keep your head down; dig your fingernails into your arms until it hurts; let it hurt; run; I know you don’t want to go home today, so run; act like the warrior I know you are so bent on becoming; let your feet pound the earth until it hurts your soles, until it hurts your soul; puff your breath hard; this time, breathing is not a symbol of your suffering; it is a sign that you are alive; so, goddammit, breathe; this is how to bash your knees; this is how to be relieved that it hurts; this is how to deal with the relief that it hurts; this is how to ignore the worried voice of your friend; this is how to ignore the chastising voices in your head; this is how to watch the blood flow; watch it mix with mud and fading summer air; don’t wash it off yet, let those scars set into beautiful marks of battle, so you can look even more like that warrior I know you are so bent on becoming; know that you are made of blood and screams and dark summer nights, so hold onto that; this is how to grit your teeth against it; this is how to walk faster; this is how to run faster; this is how to let your heart beat until you can’t breathe again; this is how you feel the rhythm of the heart beats that will call out to you, to those who will fall for you and catch you right back; run when you feel alone; run so you don’t feel alone; when you’re running you can feel free; you say you hate running; you’re lying girl, stop lying girl; this is how to embrace the freedom; this is how to embrace the wind, and the wild, and the blood; this is your blood on the rocks; this is your blood in the stream; this is your blood, the blood you watch flow with patience and understanding; you should be crying girl; you should be wailing girl; I understand why you’re not; this is how to fulfill the role of the warrior I know you have already become; I

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know there is still blood in you yet, so fight on; but what if I have no more strength to fight?; you mean to say that after all this time that wasn’t the reason you were fighting in the first place?

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