Running free

You told me to look up from time to time
from the habit I had of looking at my feet.

I tried.
And for a while I succeeded.

Head up
I discovered the colors I had missed —
The pink hues of the magnolia tree in my front yard
The purple-streaked sky at dusk

Beauty I had seen,
but never noticed.

For a while I wrote
about the calm in my heart
and the wheel in my head that turned
for the first time smoothly,
finely tuned with the rest of me.

You told me you noticed a change,
and I didn’t shy away from the compliment.

I was running,
for the first time,
free.

But it didn’t last.

Soon enough
My head began to look down again,
My thoughts got stuck in a loop,
my feet dragged as if I were walking
through the thickest of mud.

I was afraid to seek you,
to tell you that my old ways were back
that I wasn’t as strong as you thought I could be.

Alone,
the knots grew tighter,
the ideas became tainted with conflict.

Until you called
and reminded me of purple skies
and pink blooms
of unbreakable bonds
and unselfish love

and of why we had chosen to run free.