Your heart pumps.
Your blood rages.
Your eyes bulge
and your sinews cramp
but you continue through it all.

Your machine is working
at one hundred and three percent
which it can maintain
for only moments
which may not be enough time
to reach your goal.

Your brain struggles
to calculate whether accomplishment
is near
or if you’ll fail before the finish line.
You hope not.
You really want to arrive on time
and there won’t be another bus
for seventeen minutes.