Issue 4 on Mehlima Bookden

Midnight Run - Part IV

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Morning came without asking, laying a quiet calm over the same streets that had once carried his panic.
Cyrus stepped out, not with urgency this time, but with something softer, something that stayed after a long night.

He wasn’t searching, or at least that’s what he told himself.

Near the edge of the pavement, something shifted. He stopped.

“Angel…?”

She stood there.
Still. Watching him as if nothing had happened, yet everything had.

The Real Victory

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

No one remembers when the race began. It seems to start quietly, somewhere between expectations and the need to move forward. People run at different speeds, some rushing ahead, others trying not to fall behind. There are no clear rules, yet everyone seems to know they must keep going.
At first, it feels natural, matching steps with those around you, following paths already worn. But somewhere along the way, the pace changes. What once felt like movement begins to feel like pressure. The finish line is never in sight, yet the urgency to reach it grows.
Some slow down, not out of defeat, but to breathe. Others keep running, unsure of what they are chasing. And a few begin to question if the race was ever theirs to run. In moments of stillness, something shifts. The noise fades, and the path feels less crowded. It is there that one begins to understand, life was never about outrunning others, but about knowing when to move and when to pause.
And perhaps, the real victory is not in finishing first, but in choosing how to run at all.

The heart remembers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What’s held too close begins to grow,
In quiet spaces we don’t show.
It rests between the things we say,
And follows us when we walk away.

A pause too long, a glance misplaced,
A thought we tried not to embrace.
It shifts in tone, it bends the air,
A presence felt but never there.

We carry on as if it’s small,
Yet feel its weight behind it all.
And in the end, it finds its way —
Through hearts that tried to look away.