What It Means To Run Away
Elegant Escape, Christina Mokwa + Katherine Alt (2025)
Digital collage
What It Means to Run Away
(in 500 Words or Less)
To run away means to play both Ariadne and the Minotaur — making a bed in the corner of the mirrored hall — not knowing if you will die in it.
To run away means itchy feet — letting your thick blood run from country to country in imaginary chase — all to outrun the stink of him // to run away is to be the ogled teenager, all misshapen limbs and heart three sizes too large, ever-ready to be punctured.
To run away is to gulp when you see the half-lidded eyes of the fishermen on Fondamenta dell’Osmarin — flashing images coming against your will, and wondering if they will devour you — there, right there, on the street — bones and all.
To run away is to know phrases like preponderance of the evidence, benefit of the doubt, good faith — wondering, where is my benefit? Where is my faith?
To run away is to be disillusioned by a world loyal only to its own perpetuation.
To run away is to forget the angel you prayed for is the space between your own hands.
To run away is to work best, as a family, with a television between you // to run away is to ignore the panic attack you don’t have a name for, the empathy that has no place in this house, the recurring bloody nose // to run away is to live in a thick, heavy silence filled with viscous tv static.
Running away is becoming comfortable with distraction — the new car smell in the driveway, the many trips to Aruba, and that dreaded of all nobler distractions in your twenties — graduate school.
Running away is putting your so-called misplaced rage in a tiny pine box — along with your hopes, ambitions, and femininity — in your parents’ backyard, next to your first dog, who died of cancer too young.
To run away is to subdue the voice of suspicion // to run away is to never question what is convenient // to run away is to abandon asking why.
Running away is to make good friends with names like Goldschläger, Russian Standard // to run away is to bite your bubblegum tongue so much you remember no other taste.
To run away is to bend to the western world’s three C’s — compliance, complicity, conformity.
To run away is to be eager to please — feeding every mouth but your own // to run away is to hit 97 pounds and to feel proud, not grotesque.
To run away is to make love, gratuitous and greedy, along the canal — until the fog and the lamplight dull your senses — until you split his heart and eat it wetly — devour it like a child — with no fear of the stain.
*Written work by Christina Mokwa – © Christina Mokwa/Mokwa LLC/Mokwa Creative Company
