RYL Forums - Runner

Runner

Runners are suppose to be
Twizzler legs and noodle arms.
They are skeleton dioramas
plucked from science classrooms,
tossed into shorts made for preschoolers
and launched at the nearest track.
Nobody told chubby girl.

Her first love was French fries,
her second, self-deprecation and
her third, 5k’s.

She can’t look at a mirror
for more than thirty seconds
because she won’t stare down
the mammoth that is pushing
against her cotton shirt and denim
jeans.

She’ll tell you she’s smooshy
and tell you jokes about being fat
and fluffy. She never calls herself
an athlete.

But she knows what it feels like
to make rubber sole love to the
sidewalk while the rest of the city
is still trying to pull the moon back
down for one last kiss.

Her fellow food fanatics
don’t understand that her
lust for the street is about
sanity. All weekend It’s bread and
butter, to brown sugar oatmeal,
to the last chocolate chip cookie.

But when Monday morning comes,
she laces her apartment key to her
shoe and lets her headphones drown out
everything but her breath. She closes her eyes as she passes by windows.
She refuses to run along side of the reflection she regrets.

Her concrete lover never cares
about her looks as long as her treaded
steps glide across the asphalt.

When her feet hit the pavement, her toes stoking the cement, she forgets that last night’s peanut butter binge fuels her.

when she shoves her oversized turkey thighs into a pair of spandex
shorts, she is a Goddess.

She’s not chubby girl anymore, she’s machinery, bones and gears, power, respiration, execution, strength.