A poem from Split This Rock

This poem was featured on their site last week. It caught my attention, and hope it catches yours:

Prayer for those who run 

I wish you swift wind.
I wish you a changed phone number
that stays changed.

I wish you throwing away the cell the parents bought to track you with.
I wish you the Greyhound,
PATH train, whatever transit you’re waiting for
coming on time
and taking you away express with no stops.

I wish you a city with affordable housing.
An apartment where you smear blood above the door
so their angel of death
will pass you by.

I send you this story:
my people are the fuck ups
the runaways, the ones who waited to tell their parents they were queer,
or remembered, til they were over 21
and couldn’t be committed
— not as much.

The ones whose therapy is backpacks and shoplifting and silence,
The ones who grew as much of their own food in their yard as they could
as a survival mechanism
not a fun green hobby
the ones who whisper I will beat you with a pipe
I am feral as fuck

I tell you the story that even now that I am an unexpected sort of success
I am always and forever this close to walking away to the woods
with everything I own in a ripped-up plastic bag
and I know I could thrive there:

I still don’t know how to adult or tame,
and I hold that tight
side by side with the warm kitchen, the steady love.

I was born to run and I made the home I deserved
out of the beauty I found in garbage
and my imagination
So can you

Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

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