xii

"When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race."

           -H.G. Wells

            Every day, I ride my bicycle to work. Every day, it takes me about seven-and-a-half minutes from my sloping driveway to reach the already-rusting bike gate outside of the fitness center. Every day, I am able to listen to the same two-and-a-half songs before chaining the squeaking, bright red two-wheeler up. And, every day, those same two-and-a-half songs remind me of

            IV

The bike ride this morning is mechanically familiar,

duct tape on the parking levy scrapes the cement, waking me up, finally.

The brake is cautiously, lightly gripped by my freshly-showered hand,

plastic flecks of black engraining themselves against my slow-wrinkling palms.

The right pedal is slow to respond to my consistent plodding,

aware and disapproving of the hundred emotions drawing my attention away from the road.

The half-empty water bottle is swinging below me from its stainless steel frame,

aching to join the puddles of brothers littering the passing, freshly-watered pavement.

The nylon backpack jogging behind me is nearly empty,

save for the paperback copy of Tender Is the Night, which I will never finish, the one with the cover that fell off when I put it in the feathering front pocket,

its two painted lovers removed from their scripted Fitzgerald lives in sudden, sad finality.

And that unwelcome song suddenly escaping from my out-of-tune lips reminds me of

and I promise myself that I will never sing it again.

Until tomorrow.

           

Today it was raining on my way home, my lime-green polo gripping to the sweat on the three hairs on my upper-arm, suffocating me. I raced the raindrops down the sidewalk, egging them on with each click of the gears, with each muscle-straining pedal cycle. I raced the raindrops. And I won.

Belting out a song (that same song as yesterday) at the very top of my lungs (probably even louder because of the ear-buds crammed in my ears,) I cruise over the bumps in the fifteen-year-old cement, turning at red lights and crossing bustling four-way streets without paying heed to the screams of angry horns, without saying anything to the old Asian couple jogging past me, without thinking about anything except

Not telling.