Usually during a run what I am thinking about is soccer if it isn’t soccer it’s about running and if it about running it’s writing. Yesterday standing on the edge of the trail I had a question to answer: What do I want out of life?
This is how it goes…
I tenderly test the left heal where I am having troubles with my Achilles with a careful slow stretch. Am I living the life I want? Pain shoots across my foot and up my leg. I stretch the right and try the left again. Am I where I belong? The tendon relaxes and I start walking stretching my good shoulder then my bad.
I turn on my music. Song one: Jerome by BNL. I miss my dog. I start running passing my old high school. I miss my sister, kind-of. Addendum: I miss the idea of what my sister could have been.
I leave the sidewalk behind me and enter the park: What do I want? Song Two: Crush by DMB. I push a thought away and increase my speed. I am not ready yet and I start thinking about soccer. Somewhere in mile two I pass the playground running to Superman by Five for Fighting. I love my children. I miss medicine. I miss school. I miss a lot of things. I think I want to go back but as I climb the hill and the sharp pain in my back reminds me why I can’t. And that honestly it is okay to miss something or someone you don't want anymore, missing and wanting are two different things. It is okay to move on. So what do I want now? Somewhere In Between by the Life House. Besides that, what do I want? I want morning coffee. Sunlight through the trees. A walk in the snow. A run in the rain. I want home made bread. I want to read and to write and to sit in the stillness of the house in the late afternoon. I want to come home in the dark driving wet streets feeling full not empty. 
Back across the sidewalk past the school and into the park again. Pray Your Gods by Toad the Wet Sproket. What do I want? Besides that. I change the song. What Hurts the Most by Rascal Flatts. My head gets real quite for the next couple of laps. I can hear my feet hit the ground. I can feel my heart beating. I listen to song after song. As I finish to Run by BNL.
I sit down in the grass beside my car. After all play lists don’t just happen they are created: there are answers on here, answers about me. He has always know that. And I am the last to know. I have been asking the wrong questions to the wrong part of my body all along. What is my heart trying to tell my head? And I have it. What I want is all right here before me. I just need to lay it out so I can see it clearly. 
There is a peace in knowing you have all you need within you to be truly happy. There is joy in looking back to find you are 9/10 down the right road already & have been for sometime.
There is a little gymnast a few blocks away waiting for her mother to reappear on a hard wooden bench so she can pretend to be annoyed that her mother never leaves her. How much she and I are alike is stunning. I'm coming...
I lay down in the shade & close my eyes. In the back of mind I can see his clear blue look that quietly tells me without embarrassing me in public I’m wrong when I’m wrong and that half sideways grin when I’m right but I don’t know it yet. I can smell apples cut with a pocket knife on the side of a dirt road while I pretend to be horrified that he carries a knife and he gently teases me by making fun of himself instead of me. I like that we can see eye to eye while still looking up to him. Most of all I love how I can feel him watching me, when I catch him he looks away, smiles and looks back so I won't doubt how he feels. And when he goes he leaves footsteps I can follow to stand on the edge of impossible because he knows I can. When I am with you I am amazing when we are apart I'm practicing.
I want to play soccer and I want to hike in the snow and I want to not be late to pick up my child.
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