It’s funny how words are seemingly inadequate
At performing their most crucial task:
Packaging emotions into simple boxes,
Gifts of meaning
For the person with whom you are conversing.

But it always seems
That the pieces of your heart that you carefully wrap in these boxes
Get lost in translation
Before exiting your mouth,
And when the box is opened again,
All that’s left are a few shadows,
Distant memories,
Of what used to be inside.

No, words cannot completely describe.
Only experience, the emotion-making factory,
Can do that.

I am a runner.
And I have tried to describe,
To preserve,
The state of euphoria my legs sweep me to
Each time I tread trails.
But when I talk,
All anyone else glimpses
Is the sliver of empty space between the “e” and the “u”
And the vaguest hint of meaning in the shadows surrounding “p h o r i a”.

And my tongue is so frustratingly incapable
Of carrying the emotions that so
Seamlessly stride
From my aching legs,
To my scorching lungs,
To my beating heart,
And back again.

No, I could never begin to explain
The feeling at the starting line,
The course stretched out before me,
A thick, heavy silence screaming,
Penetrating the frozen air,
The jolting of my anxious arms,
Quaking legs,
How a forever fits comfortably
Inside the two minute wait
For the gun.

How the gun shatters the old silence,
Tearing it like a piece of paper,
Prompting a burst of meaningless noise,
A drone of claps and cheers,
A stampede of sporadic pounding feet,
Of a hundred clumsy hearts
Desperately trying to match
The beautiful, terrifying rhythm
Of two hundred pumping legs.

It’s impossible for words to recreate
The moment when the starting line begins to fade away,
When the sound of cheers slowly separates itself
From the roar of runners
Until suddenly,
It’s gone.
And what’s left is not words,
Nor pride,
But pure adrenaline,
Barely human creatures
Running rampant
Across fields, up and down hills, around corners,
In a strange, blurred, unforgiving landscape,
And although our lungs are in flames
And our legs are pulsing in fury,
Screaming to stop,
We go, go, go, go, go.
We crave the pain,
Expect it,
Welcome it,
Almost as much as we fear it, loathe it, dread it.

And it’s torture.
Your legs gain thirty pounds
Each time someone’s stride slips in front of yours.
But when you’re winning,
You’re flying,
Light as air,
Smooth and silky as the wind on your face.

When you finish,
When your legs slowly start
To calm down,
And you don’t have to battle
With the greedy air
For a share of breath,
You start to accustom to the world
On the other side
Of the finish line.

Happiness, tiredness,
Aches, regrets,
Inhale, exhale,

Relief.
An engulfing, inflating feeling
Condensed into six
Small
Letters.
But for me,
Between the “r” and the “e”
And the “l i e f”
Lies a feeling worth the fighting,
Worth the sweat mixed with tears mixed with bubbling joy and excruciating pain.

Victory.
Seven seemingly empty letters.
But for me, the meaning of that word
Is slowly revealed in every mile,
Every pounding step,
Every pant of hot, heavy breath,
Every sprint across the finish line.

Camaraderie.
Eleven simple letters.
But for me, the bond with my teammates
Is stronger than the trunk of a mighty oak,
Than a fierce hurricane wind,
Than our legs at the end of the season.
They have seen me stripped of dignity,
At my lowest moments,
During my highest times.

Words cannot always describe experience.
But experience doesn’t always replace words.
No, it gives them meaning.