the forest

He couldnt go any faster knew his legs only had so much before they would give up and would find a way to stumble on the rocks like grey teeth biting through the earth beneath his bare feet puncturing him feeling the blood and mud splashing the back of his legs pushing himself deeper out of the forest the trees before him like charred bones avoiding each one just barely his arms searching for the spaces between where light filtered through slits light from another world the world beyond and how beautifully painful that light looked and how it opened its many arms to him so beautiful his frantic breath shortens in the air before him slipping out of his collapsing lungs and chafing mouth slipping behind him into the forest he might never escape