when he was in high school, after the summer he had met and fallen in love with her, he was on the cross country team.

he didn't particularly like to run, he wasn't very good at it, but it calmed him.

they fought, often, about her boyfriend, minor spats over how he thought she wasn't being treated right.

he would run, feel his feet make contact with the ground, feel the thud thud thud thud move through his body, feel it settle into the top of his skull.

it evened his breathing out, it made him burn in his legs instead of his chest, instead of deep within him.

as he ran he heard his grandfather's voice.

he heard the poetry.

over rough terrain, rocks that jutted into paths and roots that sprung above ground, he would be reminded of the rough line breaks placed on paper, one day, by his grandfather.

"do you see that," he said to him.

"see what?" the boy said.

"the roughness. the way it forces you to stop."

"yeah."

"it's beautiful, isn't it?"

"what is?"

"the way this man used spacing to control the language, the way he forces you to read it. beautiful."

that was the way his grandfather explained cummings to him. he was disgusted with him, which upset his grandfather.

"it's just a tool, boy, a way to show you how to read his words, to pause and speed up, to stop. think a bit."

he runs the way he imagines poets write.

sonnets flow through his head and his pacing is fluid.

reckless running, the blind running he does at night, in the dark, through the forrest, the running he does to escape the image of her and him, that running is fierce like ginsberg.