In the hours before dawn stars sing me awake.
Levers, pulleys, rope, rusted pipe, and broken windows; forgotten tools in abandoned barns, these are the materials of dreams. I find them when I run, exploring the forest trails with my heart in my throat and my knees to my chin. I run backwards through time to a childhood of pine, boulders, secrets hidden deep in the woods above my many homes. Time spins back. My legs pump hot blood through the smooth rhythmic striding of hypnotic silence. I am so much louder than my woodland companions, my legs and feet thrash through underbrush and ducking under branches I catch twigs in my hair. I am a noisy machine. The hillside is not entirely stable. I ascend slowly following deer tracks, I am an usurper and tread lightly in fragile ecosystems.
Three, maybe four, running down down down and far behind the house. Legs flashing over the soft red soil. The smell of early spring in the opening pine buds and the white shorts let my knees feel, finally the air of the world. Jumping high in the air, the trail long forgotten somewhere behind me, off an embankment and spinning twisting turning in the air to land and continue lifting and swinging my body through space. I was alone; quite suddenly the reality that I had left the cabin far behind and that I was not entirely certain how to find the trail, or home, or much of anything really made me stop my leaping and listen to the rush of blood in my ears.
The trees showed me the way home: I explore gently; I have never been lost.
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