muggy

and i'm so used to running off of adrenaline & caffeine & sheer will that now my body is cautious about returning to sleep and proper nutrition, suspicious about my motivations. & my bike is chipping pink onto my helmet and onto everything i lean it against, just like my hair fades pink onto my shoulders and onto yr pillow if you let me stay over. & the morton salt girl is doing her dance up above while the cars are trying to cut me off down below, and yr all so angry, so angry like you've forgotten the color of diversion and the taste of mud between yr toes. & i think i absorb assimilate agree too easily cuz we've been spending too much time together and suddenly i want to revert & return to my own particular eardrums. you know how it is. the streetlights never turn off and every car has to peel out at every light and the fans aren't enough to keep us from sweating, but we embrace this damp air cuz it's that zillion times inevitability, that hot breath on our faces and down our backs while we wince and fidget and roll our eyes. i saw them both look up at once with the same expression and i couldn't help but smirk at our mindless murky mirroring. i wonder if you knew it was a mistake.

artificial vanilla flavor

my skin is getting brown and my hair is getting long and i hardly think you'd recognize me, though i haven't changed at all. i'm carving songs of reversal onto the ceiling and reading between the blades of the fan while the walls swell and creak and sweat and the wind knocks the my cigarettes from the sill, scattering toasty tobacco thru my twisted sheets. there's bike wheels stacked in the living room and pink hair dye staining the sink, and we only cross paths bleary-eyed and half-dressed, leaving latenight showers or leaning over sleepy breakfasts before dashing off again. i'm considering a fling with that one in the tight pants and spiky hair (let's fling each other around and apart), the one who feigns aloofness. i've no patience for remainders. i'm a blackboard with too many smudges and i just switched back to my old pair of shoes, the ones that stayed dry all rainy winter. it's a thirsty deluge and a sweaty t-shirt and a pile of books we meant to read ages ago. crack open that dictionary and start again.

flight

So I think I may have finally learned how to fly, after years spent dreaming on rooftops and sending my soul up with puffs of wintry breath aimed towards the stars, after so many nights of practice takeoffs with an engine and a gearshift standing in for wings, under the moon with my headlights off, around curves and down hills singing and sighing through endless restless hours.

You see all along the secret lay in discovering how to plant my own two feet firmly on the earth, in not trying to leap till i knew my point of departure by heart. sometimes you have to hold on to learn how to let go. And it seems appropriate that it's Independence Day today, because suddenly i'm free from the laws of gravity.

Tonight I took off slowly with the weights of the daytime holding me down, with one foot on a pedal and the other on a curb, eyes tired & chest tight. Tonight my knees creaked and my bangs blew in my face and i swooped and soared through this city so big and so small, so close. Climbing to peaks of bridges so reminiscent of other towns (of other lifetimes) while the fireworks shot into the sky on every side and I think I shot up there with them too; I think my feet are miles above the asphalt and I'm liking the view.

this is summer, and this is subtraction

shakin fists, shakin hair, shakin bodies crammed into spaces too small and too close to the music till we're dripping sweat off our knees our chins our bangs and then running drenched out into the slightly cooler night to ride home running red lights and speeding down dark lakeside trails in the pulsing breathing night.

and later when i stumble into long quiet solo routes home, practicing riding with no hands or maybe just with no distractions, i tend to start to think too hard and wish too hard and try and will you back to me, all of you, each one who's made me shivery & giddy & lost, damn you.

summer is finally here and it's clinging to my skin and hovering above the sidewalks, making night seem too inviting in its cool endless emptiness, making me forget how soon morning comes back around.