I am always running

Muskaan Mittal

i am always running
i am always running
i am always running

as panic floods my parched being,
an army of ants bent on conquest
as fear strikes my tensed core,
a poison arrow, born to fly
as anxiety and adrenaline fuse to awaken serial shakes of exhaustion in me,
a familiar compound -
i have done this far too many times.

i run
i run
i run

i wonder what it is that i was running from?

sometimes it is a person i know
sometimes it is a person i do not
sometimes it is a place
sometimes i run in circles on a building dangerously close to the sun, avoiding omnipresent crowds as my legs give up on me, my propellers run out of battery and i finally must surrender, not before helpless flails, a reminder that i have failed:
i like to think i am running from nothing at all
(the world likes to think this too)
but what is truly chasing me, i suppose, is darkness.

as i struggle frantically in my realm of dream
(nightmare) -
the feelings are real enough -
worse so,
sometimes i feel like i am suffocating
with my eyes snapped shut and my arms stuck to my sides and my skin stuck on my body and my panic stuck inside me and me stuck inside me --

every time i wake up to deceptively calm reality
and wonder what it was that was chasing me
(still is)
at first, i ponder answerlessly, before realising

i don't have to look far to see.

This work has been published in Beetle Magazine's August 2020 Issue.