The One Who Ran Was Me

I have been tracking her for years,

the girl who ran when the sky first broke.

She left barefoot,

carrying only the sound of her own heart

beating like wings against a cage.

I found her footprints once

in the dust of a memory I tried to forget,

light steps, trembling,

as if she was learning how to disappear.

I followed the trail through silence,

through every place I swore I’d never return.

She was clever.

She hid in laughter,

in the names of people I loved too hard.

Sometimes I caught her reflection in windows,

the flash of her grief before she looked away.

Each time I called,

she flinched like a wounded animal

who had learned mercy always had teeth.

I thought I was hunting her.

But maybe I was asking her to forgive me

for letting her run alone.

When I finally found her,

she wasn’t hiding.

She was sitting beside a river of old light,

hands open,

waiting for me to arrive.

Her voice was smaller than I remembered.

Her eyes were still mine.

She said, "You came back".

And I, tired of armour and apologies,

knelt beside her.

"I never stopped looking", I said.

She smiled the way dawn does,

tender, unbelieving.

Then she reached out,

touched my chest,

and whispered, "Then stay".

So I did.

And in that staying,

the hunt ended, not in capture,

but in return.

Two halves of the same survivor

learning how to share one heartbeat again.