A Slender Distance From Where Shared Time Began

The house stood unassuming, yet abashed in its display of caution. Stark red spread thick on aging panels – shrubs carved to match their peers within a rolladex of shapely lawns. The owners fed me chocolate and cinnamon gum when we went to their door.

I can feel air rushing by in torrents as I aspirate the motion of my wheels by screaming like a banshee; it is my way of bending gender at a prepubescent age for the sake of peeling paint; it is my way of releasing future phantoms.

Now the house goes whizzing by while I think of my mother's son fading fast around the corner of our aging home. Years past, this bicycle was his. The morning he was struck, the summer sun massaged us through the leaves and wet the corners of my eyes and mouth, like a dry wind turned wet and hopeful.

Later, he learned to drink and draw blood from nimble fingers, cry while coming and eat chocolate from a lover's hand.

One day his patterns will refurface a slender distance from where shared time began.