Running

faster than feet can find footing,
forced to face up, catch up,
stand up, turn up. Running

through streets cluttered
with collisions I’ve already
crossed, with bunkers
of bones already broken, with
senses still shackled to skins
already shed, layers lost in
houses I thought were homes
but they were just illusions;
deliciously devious enough
to delude as time turned,
keeps turning, keeps taking
and I keeping running

looking, always,
for the rest,
for the rest of me, for a rest.
Running

backwards now
through a city of shadows
that have shifted in the seasons
I sought out other shores, other
stimuli, other skins to slip beneath.
Back now to before, but more
different, more difficult,
more deceiving,
catching sight of myself
in half lights and side streets,
catching sight of the sides
that I am no longer in this older
render. Running.

Wondering
is this it? Is this enough?
Is this who I am? Running

towards something
seen once, but now forgotten,
a suggestion in the shadows
of these streets but with a hope,
however fragile, lying between
the bone and the broken,
that these are just augmentations
on the byway to my becoming.

All Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

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