My bones are rods of pain that prop my heart,
my legs, my lungs, and pieces of my brain.
I run. The rest of me is wasted parts,
dead weight that dares my cadence to sustain
a pace marked by the time it takes each foot
to rise and fall like some iambic curse
that screams a perfect rhythm when its put
in place in paved, pedantic, measured verse.
The road becomes a sonnet which I write,
compelled to breathe each rhyme that sears my throat.
The road is black; my lines are thin and white,
compared to that which those before me wrote.
I stride to hide my tears within my sweat
and face the finish-line without regret.