The White Line

When I first started to run it was hard and made me feel sick and exhausted. Now I feel exhilarated. I get into a kind of trance and I feel I could run forever. That day I ran around the park, spinning dizzying loops around the canal like a comet in orbit. Burning.

The ducks went about their ducky antics; the swans exhibiting foul shows of aggression as waterfowl are wont to. The water level was high and bloated, the water murky and clear all at once, a smoky glass green, like smoothed glass pebbles on a beach. The surface rippled with lime-gold fire because the trees were lit up in the sunset, emerald and ochre, glowing golden across the river, burning.

My feet pounded damp, dirty tarmac, round behind the water and into the woods. The woods were deep and dark despite their rather modest size, because of the yew trees which were blacky-green and sucked up all the light like blitz black-out blinds. That's why they plant them in graveyards. Ambience. Then I turned the corner and  saw the sun coming through the thinning tree-trunks, and it was turning red-gold like autumn leaves on an unseasonably hot October day. It was like looking at a bonfire through my fingers, the way it was coming through the trees in its red-hot glory, burning.

The path led me winding through these dark and fiery trees and then it wound itself straight again, and suddenly the sun burst out from the canopy and hit me right between my eyes and I was utterly blinded, yet I ran on, unfazed, undeterred, ever determined, following the only thing I could see: the white line painted onto tarmac, between cycle-path and footpath. A white line leading into the light, bright enough to sear through the white-blindness, bright enough to lead me onwards, and I feel like the white line is every part of my being, my spine, my soul, my path into the future. Leading me into the light. Burning.