When You Stop Running, Will You Be Happy Where You’re At?

When you’re done running, will you be happy where you find yourself?

When you’re done fleeing the dreams that haunt you, will you remember who you are? When the monsters under your bed are burned out under a pile of ash, will you remember to stop fearing their thoughts and will you remember to think your own?

When you get to safety, will you know how to recognize it? And if you do, will you realize you don’t know how to stop? Will the place you ran to feel strange and the running like the only thing that is yours? Will the silence burn your ears?

Will you start running again to make it go away?

Will you look for someone to stop you? Will you fear you’ll have no one to meet you at the finish line when you get there? Or will you care?

If we run beside you, will you slow down and perhaps will you sit with us? Will you let us help you look for the pieces of you left behind when you first started running? Or if we try, will you just leave us holding another skin of you while you start the next leg of your journey, a little thinner?

Will you hate yourself for letting us catch you and will you stay in the night anyway?

Or will you keep running? Will your fears multiply while your heart’s divided: aching for peace but fearing devastation more? Will you tell us that everything is fine and leave us in the dark without a word? Will we wonder where you went while you forget who we were? Will you be pleased to think we cared more than you?

Will you know how much that hurt us?

Will you miss remembering how it all started? Will you miss remembering a time when you knew what scared you? If you’re hiding things from yourself, will you know?

Will you long for the time when your head felt familiar? Will you be afraid of all the lies you told to keep running because you don’t remember which ones were true? Will you resent us for making you tell lies to keep us from seeing you?

Will you become the monster under your own bed?

If you cry, should we come back to you or should we leave you? If we’re honest with you, will you be honest back or will you give us an honesty filled with soldiers? When we ask why you’re afraid are you wondering if there’s anything inside your walls left for you? And will you have the courage to face the answer?

Will you face it with us?

When the world doesn’t have to be dark anymore, will you remember to turn the light back on?