Januariad

Robert is not jogging. He sports the clothes (light, strangely textured fabrics of colours that do not match or ever think to match), and wears the shoes (an impressively discordant collage of perforated nylon, grossly ornamented plastic mouldings and reflective details), but his progress could not be called a jog.

The paths are full of his people, all similarly dressed, all heads bowed, arms crook’d, hands in gentle fists. Their legs carrying them with the deliberately restrained strides of the committed. They move slowly, surely, endlessly eating miles.

Robert runs with abandon. His long, long legs are flung forward in great, elastic leaps that carry him quickly onwards. He seems often on the point of falling, shimmying and rolling as his feet land unevenly. His arms are thrown every which way as he moves, as though trying to detach themselves from his shoulders. Robert’s features are pale and mottled pink, his eyes crowed, his mouth pulled back in a pained rictus. His hair, not short, dances unconstrained at the back of his head.

His pace, his form, his face. Nothing suggests this can last. He runs like a dying sun, passing dozens of joggers as he burns himself out. The laughing stock and envy of them all.