I never had occasion to learn the word ‘tussock’ until I was fumbling up over the frozen hills of Southern Vermont, fingers catching on the crystal-limned tufts of long grass. Out here in the blue-crowned fields, the wind howls down into the bowl of the valley in an unstoppable rush, whipping the ringing forest into a fervor and startling the birds from their boughs. Three for a funeral, or three-faced Hecate, or the Morrígan in her triplicate corvid form. Their hoarse screaming heralds the cold before it blasts over my skin, sapping the moisture and leaving my lips chapped and trembling.

Every morning, I make my slow way over the hill to open up the post office. I sit on the loading dock with my thermos of tea and a lit cigarette, watching the sun make its groaning way over the mountain. It, too, is tired. From here, I can see the mail truck come rumbling over the gravel road like a great beast; its vintage form and flaking paint rendering it charming. An old machine for an old world, full of colonial houses and barns and shingle cottages. If not for me—brown skin, spike-studded leather gloves, combat boots and sculptural woolen coat—this place could be 1963, still.

Maybe, who knows, I might kind of get there. If I squint I’ll see some sort of
finish line.

Am I doing all I’m supposed to do to get there? How did other people get there? Were they
smarter than me? Better than me?

How long will I be doing this for? All I want to do is give up, throw myself on the ground and
wait until someone takes my hands and drags me where I need to go.

But I can’t. Somehow my body keeps moving forward.

I know I’ll get there if I keep going a little longer. I’m already pushing as hard as I can.

It’s my own path—no one else’s. So I think I’ll go at my own pace,

and I’ll be there before I know it.

Running even when tired, even when the pain is overcoming the sky. Run from the history of two dead parents and a Brooklyn that hurts too much to return to. Run from the knowledge of time, the leukemia only took a month to kill and the car accident mere minutes. Run from the heartbeat of the moon, everything that stays alive after it is technically gone. Run from the memory of the father who laughed whenever he got food stuck in his beard. Run from the stars that looked after me because father was not there to do it anymore. Run from the silence of walking. Walking is too hard after grief. It forces you to listen when all you want to do is scream. It forces you to call to yourself, to recognize your own breathing. I don’t want to trace the sound of my own breath after too much death. I prefer to whisper. I prefer to be loud but always sound. Don’t let them hear you cry. It will make things harder on your mother. But I can cry when I run. I can scream when I run. And I can be loud. Because dying is loud. And living is too. And dreaming is loud. And then soft, when I wake up and realize what the world wanted me to do was stop. Stop and listen and beat my chest and go down to the ground and wail to the stars, to the moon, to everything that still dares to move.