You were a spectacular flash,
a streak of lightning across a desperate sky.
You were never meant to stay.
Back then, everything was dazzling.
The gushing wind, the fury in every step.
I ran with a singular heart,
and I believed that was the height of being.
I look now at the calm sidewalk.
The comfortable, meandering path.
It is safe. It is good.
And yet, a heartache washes over me,
a silent question: “Is this all?”
For so long, I thought I saw your back ahead of me,
a ghost I could never surpass.
I asked myself: What do I lack?
Courage? Support? Or is it just that my best is behind me?
I was asking the wrong question.
The truth is, I was blinded by the light of that single, brilliant run.
I failed to see that the glory was never in the speed, or even the finish line.
It was in the stumble.
It was in the relentless, stubborn, defiant act of getting back up.
I do not need to surpass you.
I need to thank you.
You were not my rival; you were my proof of concept.
You are the living evidence that I can run with a full heart.
The curtain on the new era rises.
It does not require another lightning strike.
It requires the steady, self-generated current of showing up.
Of trying. Of stumbling. Of rising.
I am not here to beat the ghost of the best I ever was.
I am here to build a legacy worthy of the resolve she taught me I had.
So I will jog. I will walk. I will sometimes meander.
But I will move.
And in that motion, I will find my own wind.
I stand on the edge of a dream, promising never to turn back.
Not to you, but toward the horizon you helped me see.