All the men in my family are runners. They run with rubber soles and Achilles heels only rising just above the slick pavement. Their heart beats in sync with the swing of their arms. They run towards a finishing line that seems to be only theirs. I am proud to call them my family. My uncles. My cousins. My grandfather.
When their breaths fall as their feet hit the course, I am left wondering if I will ever catch up, live up to them. Him. I will always fall trying to find myself. In the moments I find myself, my mind chooses to collapse into itself.
What drives them to chase after a presumed finishing line if they already made it time and time again? We all know that the finishing line is there waiting for us because we are all chasing after the same clock.
Almost six years ago, I stopped running and came to a closet.
A place where a solitary strip of light dangles its beams over a rack full of business suits wrapped in cellophane. Not a single black one. His navy suits with golden buttons were his signature. His side of the closet used to be the prime spot for hiding in the child's game. I never understood and still don't know why this place became a hub for us. We exchanged hushed secrets between the pleats of his pants and the cracks at the bottom of the glass doors. Never broken.
In the farthest reaches of his section of their walk-in, I find a bulletin board filled with numbers. I find out only later they are named after an article only worn by babies. Bib. These numbers putting the racers in line, identifiers among those there to support.
I always wait for me to reach for them to touch a part of him one last time. My hands never extensions of his past. I never touch them no matter how many years have passed or how many marathons he has missed.
I am left wondering if his spandex shorts that he wore all those marathons ago need to be put on hangers. As if they needed to stay straight. Unwrinkled. Waiting for him to come home, put them back on, and win again.
His last race he beat by laughing.
I am a runner by blood, but if my course is more of brushing off what I really need and more of sidewalks full of cracks than I am going to follow their lead. I am going to be a runner just like them because he will still be there to catch me when I collapse even if his hands can only be felt, never seen.
