Eighteen Thousand Steps

The world is painfully beautiful now. Every tree in bloom, every flower washing its colors over the world, it happens so quickly.

Blink and it will be gone.

My head was full of black today. I cancelled the plans and began to walk, instead; I did not stop for hours. Walked through the lilac hedges, the apple blossoms, the pink sunset sky and still waters. I turned up the music, loud, angry, it could not keep out the scents of spring. My molten lava within could not make amends with the sweet serenity without.

People love to run, they say it clears their heads, that it sets things in order. Later, I lay in the bath and couldn't remember a single thing I had thought, a single question I had answered. I end as I began, only with slightly wearier limbs. It is light, I cannot sleep. I don't want to, until fall.

Is this life now, Stockholm? Do you offer me every delicate joy imaginable, that I will forget my disdain, my plans, my direction? Do you smooth over rough edges with that view over the harbor, it gets me every time, I know you know that. You build our love in a castle in the sky, it is bound to fall, I tip-toe so carefully so as not to remind it of its frailty.

There is too much surge to fit in this heart. Life is a long struggle just to keep it tucked away.