Katy took Fitness for Life the next term

and recruited me to run: we’d head west,

away from the quad lights, past the darkened

track, then up the hill where the street’s

shadowed in maples, until the bright and

busy corner on ninth where we’d slide south

and downhill the entire length of campus,

not stopping, not slowing, pushing each

other with our pumppump, our thumpthump,

then going west again, apartments on the left,

the park and pond on the right, until the lots

came to us, and we steered north, seeing

how we had worked, how we had tried,

and how, when we halted, it was going to end.

Jared Pearce grew up in California and now lives in Iowa. Website: https://jaredpearcepoetry.weebly.com.