notes from a commuter

(bike edition)

I write a poem out loud and think it might be the best but forget it the moment I get off my bike and reach my destination.

Sounds of traffic below and around, lulls me like my lover’s voice when reading stories to me at night.

There are moments I beg my legs to remain strong enough to push through steepness; they always come back with a counter-offer.

Though her voice haunts the emotions out of me, Sinead O’Connor may not be the best choice for a bike riding mix tape.

Where does all the sweat go? Does it just eek out and dry on my skin?

I want to end this summer with legs like bleached tree trunks.

I want to be a graffiti artist.

When I think I can no longer ride, I turn a slight corner on the Williamsburg Bride and see Lindsay. Then, I realize it is only a stranger impersonating her blond. Alas, I take this as a sign to keep going.

Sometimes I fear that bridges are going to force me off of them, then realize they have no hands.

I have replaced coffee with coconut milk and carrot juice.

I have replaced booze with coffee.

Sometimes I fondle my upper thighs with my hands, while I wait for a traffic light to turn green. I like feeling their stick, their firm, their shake.

What shade of red is my face in this moment and how do the other bike riders make it to work in their work clothes without looking like drowning victims.

I have begun to scout places to quick change from torn jean shorts and tank top to “work attire”; Starbucks is far roomier than the stall at my school.

I worry about the suffocation of my back, pressed firmly to book bag.

I worry that I will never be strong enough to bike the entire way across the Williamsburg Bridge.

This is so exhausting and yet, there is nothing better than driving over the city you are so frequently riding under.

oh bridge, oh breadcrumbs, oh night of graffiti’d silence!

I am looking down a lot.
I am looking down for the crumbs to lead me home. Lead me into the kind of love that shocks my poems and lowest rib. Lead me toward employment. Lead me closer to where the moon naps during the day.

There was a walk.
There was a walk across Williamsburg bridge where graffiti lit our steps and to look up was to read the stories of every climber, every dreamer, every escape artist and mother and poet and traveler.

I thought about jumping.
Does everyone think about jumping and wolves and the rising cost of stars in the sky when height is involved? When there are cables and wires and metal everywhere and trains slide by right below and how wonderful to jump on top of one and see how far it gets me/us….

how much longer will we be able to afford these nights?

[now]
there are lists written on my forearm and they contain the code to my cerebellum.
these words include the password to that memory from five years ago when I traveled up that roller coaster called parking garage and gave away my gave away my

[later]
a movement.
don’t call it a dance.
call it a bridge between others
call it a poem through limb’s language(s)
call it making love on stage
call it the intricacy of tangles and hitchhiked bodies
call it:
an end.