In the Act of Walking (A Litany)

I walk to daydream. To not be angry. It’s a New Yorker thing. Walking back in time, for a sign of anything– answers, alignment, rest from the worry within.

It resets my breathing. I feel less alone though no one speaks to me, no one touches me. I hope to run into a friend though I walk to disappear.  I’m just keeping it real.

I don’t run, I’m not good at it. At my pace, I can touch the bricks, the rails, the trees. It makes me feel that there is something more than I can comprehend in this moment.

There’s an answer I seek, or a higher thing that is too complicated to name. I think I’m walking to find God…

I just want to unplug sometimes and although walking is a public thing, I monologue to the void. My breathing is in control when I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth.

Concentrating helps me disappear, walking is the only way I can do that. I have to remind myself that I am awake, that at every turn there can be a person and green lights mean the cars are coming. I must remember nothing stops for me here.

Something manifests in the background, I am careful with my thoughts. There’s a lot of sweating in this act, the release of fear. There is a lot of misfortune throughout this journey, but I keep serene in my reflections.

On my walk, I am of no level of mastery, nascent like a student to be mentored by the streets. I get as far as I can. There is a romance with the wind and I am led exactly where I need to be. The release of a headache is enchanting.

I walked into this poem to seduce your mind– feeling woman, adoring the shift from girlhood to womanhood. Melt under the gaze of the sun, for the concrete to make a novel out of our love story. And so I must walk because I can’t scream learning to forgive without having to forget.

This walk makes up for all the times my limbs went numb on the couch and all I could do was sit and watch the arms of the clock drag into the day. I purge. I purge. I purge the bad thoughts– consulting with my conscience, we agree it’s better to walk it off.

I go off grid and somehow there is enough ground for me to keep walking. So much time to figure out what I’m going to do with all this time that’s left. My thoughts shift on cadence imagining alternative paths then pondering what life would have been like if things never unfolded the way they did. But I walk to forgive myself for inflicting punishment on the one person I’m never as kind to… me.

I make myself known to nature, so that it considers me kin when it comes to destroy. Sometimes this act is the only way to finish the poem…