Running From Obsession

It is not a compliment.
It is not love.
It is not desire twisted into devotion.
It is obsession, faceless and relentless,
breathing against my neck,
clawing at my heels,
pulling me into the shadows
with hands I have never invited.

I run.
I run through streets that do not remember my name,
down alleyways that promise nothing but escape,
across highways where headlights blur my shape,
where maybe, just maybe,
I could disappear into the blur of motion,
a ghost before death,
a whisper before silence.

But you are always there.

Through changed names, blocked accounts,
burned bridges, buried footprints,
new addresses scrawled onto receipts I do not keep—
you still find me.
Like the stink of something rotten in the air,
like the sickness in my lungs when I wake up gasping,
like a shadow that moves when I do not.

You still find me.

And I am still running.

The sweat slicks down my back,
soaks my hair,
pools in the hollows of my skin—
a baptism of exhaustion, of desperation.
I have never been this tired,
and yet I cannot stop.
To stop is to let you win.
To stop is to let you reach me.
To stop is to feel your breath against my cheek
and I would rather die than let that happen.

You will never understand
how I would rather be anything than found.
How I am a lily drowning in the filth of your pursuit,
my petals crushed beneath the weight of your sickness,
my roots tangled in the thick, black sludge
of your desperate, pathetic want.

You think this is devotion.
You think this is proof.
You think that love is something you can take,
that if you chase me long enough,
I will collapse into your arms,
bruised and breathless and yours.

But love is not a carcass you can feast on.
Love is not a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to me.
Love is not a name you can whisper into the night,
believing it will summon me like a spell.

I do not belong to you.
I have never belonged to you.

And yet, you are still chasing.
And I am still running.

Through cities where no one knows me,
through phone numbers that do not exist,
through prayers that fall on deaf ears,
through the kind of exhaustion
that sinks into my bones like poison—
I run.

And maybe, one day, I will stop.
Not because you caught me,
but because I have left this body behind,
slipped from this skin,
become something you cannot chase.

But until then—

I am still running.