Shadow Study

When someone is yelling in a movie, I turn  
the volume down. She was running
in a field, though nothing
was chasing her and there was nowhere to go.
The truth was this: We are each  
running for our lives. Flailing  
our limbs as if split-bodied, ill-mattered,  
tired with the decades but desperate  
enough to run. What form does a void  
take in a field as relentless as stone? I felt most  
myself when I was least loved. Cast into  
the night like a half-formed sound, I was falling  
toward sleep when I heard a faint  
rustling as if it were calling from a distant world,  
near enough to startle me awake.
My eyes opened; the room, empty.
They say we are made from astral debris.
They say a crater in the ground is an imprint  
of hunger cut from a falling, far-flung thing.