Moment | Nikaela Aitken

My arms pump, synchronized with my feet which are pounding feathers that penetrate the silence that hovers. This mute escape is only known to those who dare live before the sun, those vigorous before the masses hit their snooze. My lips, intensely petrified, sting from the polar air. I look like an owl ready to hoot, sucking in through a rounded slit, barley audible. I breathe out a mix of air and fear and thought punctuated methodically in slow stabs that make their presence known by floating puffs of white-tinted transparency. Hammering, from my iPod, resonates my eardrums scaring away my own fears, and most thoughts. Only a few thoughts are able to bore through the wall of noise, speared on by the burning ache that has began to wrestle my body. I smile as my heart, pounding, echoes the repetitious pulsation of my arms my feet my ears- this throbbing is what I thrive on. One more mile. One more block. One more step.