Here’s what it is, being human: you fall. Again, and again, and again, until your skin is purple and violet and ugly green, until your knees are sticky with blood and there’s gravel ground into your palms, until every time you hit the ground it empties your lungs.
But- wait. Here’s what it is, being human: you get up. And get up, and get up, and get up, until every muscle screams, until it becomes a given/certainty/inevitable, until you’ve drained the dregs of strength and there’s nothing left and still. Get up.
The stars are spinning across the sky, singing a mystery beyond the paved streets you know, and the melody reverberates through every bone. Get up. Exhaustion packs itself, gentle, into the hollow of your chest. Soft, it fills your throat, and you begin to dissolve into static-grey. Something is howling in the distance, lonely. Get up. Drag a deep breath in, and another. Snap your teeth and set a spark. Howl back as the oxygen ignites in your lungs, a promise to the constellations that you are still here.
Get up.
I really like it. Here is my parody:
She ran slipping and falling, knocking the air from her lungs, gashing her knees and elbows, ripping open her palms and feet. Her face bled from the many rocks she kicked up and her hair stuck flat from the sweat dripping down her. She could hear them now, closer than ever. And she fell again and again and again, the jarring shock of the ground emptying her lungs. Flashes of the once beautiful sky now dark and grim passing by, or maybe that was just her imagination. Her vision was going dim, her determination fading. She couldn’t go any farther, her strength had failed. Yet she got up. And ran, slipping and falling, rubbing dirt into her already gashed knees and elbows, driving stones into her bloody palms and feet, tasting the muddy blood mingled with sweat running down her face. They were still there. And she fell again and again and again. Until her world was static gray, until her heart was failing, until her lungs couldn’t draw air, until it didn’t seem worth the effort to get up. Not again. Still she got up.