Cul de Sac

Apathetic eyes stare blankly in the mirror. I crawl out of my apartment on trembling legs and arrive sweating at the office hours too late. Your face is green, a colleague snickers, and my stomach turns. There is a cramp in my leg that will not go away, a mauling ache in the back of my skull. Outside, late summer is still warm, the sky filled with those fluffy clouds that look so great in photographs. They ask questions and I still have no answers. I still haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing.

It doesn't help to run to the ends of the earth, she writes. You never can outrun yourself.

But I ran and ran this narrow street; I knew it was bound to curve into a dead end and I thought when it inevitably reared its ugly face I'd be stuck, forced to backtrack down so many tragic nights of unknown fog and end up no better than at the beginning. Yet when the dead end came, it ended not so much in a brick wall as in a steep dropoff with blue skies above. Just one more step and you're off the edge. Irrevocable, yes.

But I am free.