It’s my 25th birthday & I’m out for a run along
the beach of Half Moon Bay, California. Evening’s
descended, the sky still hungover from the afternoon rain,
the waves lumbering to their own
indecipherable meter.

My leg strikes the ground &          instantaneously
I feel my body
abandon
itself,

feel its uneven barter of cell for cell,
its reduction into some sort of fleshy

Theseus’ ship.

I’m a slow runner — more often than
not I end up in the past.
Even on this night of salt & sand I can’t
help but think of a hundred runs before,
that time out at Lighthouse Point or
the convenience store in Shanghai that
sold fake Vitamin Water & reeked of
piss & cigarettes.

The point being that there
is no point. That the runner and the
running both run in circles.

The night that is any night spills
out onto a spotlit strip of surf
shops & chic bistros, behind each
plate of glass some din & vim
that belongs elsewhere, anywhere.