A bicycle is the most efficient transportation machine.  A little input and I’m gliding, moving a useful measurable distance but more than that. I like going fast enough so the wind in my ears is louder than my thoughts.  On a tough day I like riding until I can be grateful again; sometimes that takes a couple hours but every ride is a good ride.

My youth’s independence was a banana seat Huffy pulled from an under-appreciated pile of rust in the back of St. Vincent’s Thrift Shop.  No school bus meant riding to school, the first 45 minutes of every day in all weather. Afternoons were exploring detours; summers were expeditions to the city limits, sometimes beyond.  I needed an upgrade for high school; I found a spotless antique 3 speed Raleigh, the cultural English workhorse collecting dust in an unlikely garage for $50.

I kept it through two foster homes. The first one kept me busy with farm chores, but the second was back in town. There, I had the bike back, and as an aside, they had a phenomenally sophisticated wall sized sound system: reel-to-reel and amazing headphones. I would forget myself in records: Sgt. Peppers, Genesis, Yes, etc, and another favorite. Just a guitar and piano instrumental album with a simple melody called Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter. Something about that one song in particular I heard faint glimmerings of contentment that was denied to me.  I would replay it to cling to this hint of a simple happiness I didn’t understand; that if it was in the song, it was somewhere deep in me.
Without a car for 10 years, one used 10-speed or another got me to various eccentric jobs.  

Fast forward to the life-changer, after a divorce. Needing to reconnect with myself, I searched for a decent bike. I found it hanging dusty in the back of a cluttered boutique shop smelling of tire rubber, quiet with racers’ confidence. They had a Lemond thoroughbred on consignment, assembled custom 5 years earlier to race. It was slightly outdated, but a dent on the top tube put it out to pasture. It was steel though, so rideable enough for me.  My entire $300 savings and it was mine. Then I discovered the special pedals needed special shoes, so another month saving for those.  I wasn’t going to wear those silly spiderman outfits, until I started to ride more than 10 miles and my **** demanded it.  And those pockets in the back of the shirt were handy.  I met a friend who taught me how to draft: my skinny wheel a few inches behind the bike in front at 20 mph, to save precious energy in the slipstream. Truly dangerous, vulnerable, and effectively blinded; but he pointed at the ground with various hand signals to warn of upcoming road hazards. I was touched by this wordless language of trust and camaraderie. This innate concern is essential to the sport, even among competitors, so it seems to attract quality people I liked.  My new life expanded with friends.

I discovered biking exercise could stabilize the life-long effects of brain injury, lost some weight, grew stronger, and started setting goals.  First longer group rides, then a century (100 miles in one ride), then mountain biking: epic fun in nature, unadulterated happiness.  Then novice racing, then the next category up with a team, then a triathlon.  It became an admitted obsession but I won a pair of socks or bike parts every now and then.  Eventually tattooed two bike chains around my ankle, one twisted and the other broken.  I loved the lifestyle, and had truly reinvented and rediscovered myself.

A 500 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles with fellow wounded veterans helped dissipate the old shame from the military.  I had joined the ride to raise money for a good cause.  I respected the program and knew personally that cycling had changed my life.  They turned out to be inspiring, helping me more than I could have helped them.  Some had only just started riding a bike for only a few weeks, some were amputees fit with special-made adapters on regular bikes, some had no legs using hand cycles.  They all joined on to the task of riding 500 miles. No one whined, and helping each other finish the day was the only goal.  While riding with them, I began to open up about my experience.  I found a few others who also had TBI, and we could laugh about similar mishaps.  The other veterans didn’t judge me about anything, like when I was injured, the nature of my disability, how much I did or didn’t accomplish. I had signed up just like them, had to recover back to a functioning life just like them.  It was the first time in my life that whole chapter in my life was accepted; I wasn't odd, and they helped close the shame on that old chapter.  (Thank you, R2R.)  The next year I took a 1500 mile self-supported bike trip through western mountain ranges with my husband and soulmate, whom I had met mt. biking.

There was one late Spring day, finally warm after a long winter, when I just wanted to ride for a few hours by myself.  No speedometer or training intervals, just enjoy the park road winding under the trees. I had downloaded some new music on the IPod, a sampler from the library.  I felt happy.  Life is Good.  Rounding a bend by the river, coasting through sunbeams sparkling the park’s peaceful road, my earphones unexpectedly played Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter.  I hadn’t heard that simple guitar tune in three decades.  My God, time suddenly disappeared.  I was right back in the forgotten foster home, listening for the faint silver threads of the contentment I was feeling at this very moment on the bike.  The full force of this sudden connection, the wholeness of the life and unity of myself in one epiphany, brought me to tears. I found myself pouring my heart into praying hang in there, girl, hang in there, you’ll find it and I felt my younger self hearing echoes of birds singing in new green leaves.

Elizabeth and God exist in a sunflower grave. Her mother and father slit her stomach open and watched the contents pour out like
spaghetti confetti.

Tommy, Elizabeth's boyfriend, rode his ocean blue Huffy, until the tread on his tires grew bald and until the grips were blanketed by dead skin. Looking for her, panoramic views of the horizon leapt beside him. Silhouettes of his legs, churned and kissed the orange and caramel dusk. With every tear in his hamstrings and calves, the **** in his sky grew and swallowed the memory of Elizabeth Mendenhall, Honor Student.

Margot, Elizabeth's twelve year-old sister, was an idealistic soul. Taking a Sharpie, she wrote on her sister's wall, "Liz, there is no death greater than the loss of self, and no life greater than one where we continuously search for what self is." Margot struggled with concentrating and frying eggs - but focused on the sunflower garden, dangerously and perfectly.

Hilary and Brendan were thirty-five and thirty-six years-old. They stabbed their daughter thirty-seven times. They don't know why they did it, they just couldn't think of a reason not to do it.

She begged for her life. The yellow petals of the sunflowers caught blood-drops and, after enough struggle, floated down to kiss and lay on Elizabeth's slow-twitch body. Hilary looked at Brendan and said, "What does this mean?" Brendan shrugged and said, "This is new to me."

The garden was an oven, and digging her grave was like pulling back on a cheap, plastic latch. Elizabeth had pale, pre-cooked pie crust skin. The slits in her stomach looked like peeks into a cherry stuffed filling. Crinkled lips looked indented by a stainless steel fork, back and forth, side to side. And the soil rained upon her like the reversal of hot vapor, returning home.

Elizabeth and the Sunflower Garden.

Tonight I planned to take flight to the moon with nothing but the thought of you; borrowing your eyes as well as the throb of your heart.
Counting down the seconds until we blast off.
Our silhouette left shone on the face of the moon; our cheeks felt with the blush of the wind. Our face pressed tight from the force of how fast our heart peddles.
With you leaned back
Your cheek pressed against mine, sitting on the front of the handle bars.
The sound of the bike chain echoing off the stars; this cosmic feeling racing,
Pounding through my chest.
Watching you ascend the stars as I've always watched you do in the dreams I've had of you.
Profound, how you've changed my outlook on life.
Losing track of time in the simplicity of how wide your cheeks spread.
Saturated in the gleam of your eyes.
I've lost touch with the reality of everything that is real.
In the midst of waking eyes; I always forget what I dream about.
My perception of you as a shooting star blasting off to the moon
On a bike

Rat-a-tat Bumpstock, Gadsden on his truck, so easily
led by his nose
Has a dip and a beer with an old friend dear
Let's listen and see what we hear

"It's your turn to shoot"
"Ahhh got **** on my boot"
"Did you get you a deer this season?"

Shot a doe just last week, said the sporting man
Eating corn right in front of my stand

Did you see on the channel this morning
That story about the wedding cake?
Don’t get me started, said Rat-a-Tat
Okay, go ahead, what was Sean’s take?

He said in a town there’s this baker-man
Who believes in Jesus, just like you and me
Then “ding” went the bell of his shop door
You won’t believe what then he did see
Tat it was two men holding hands, dear God, and they said that they wanted to wed
The baker, now personally offended, tossed them out on their ******* heads

Wow such courageous action, said Tat, and from a man who bakes at that!
To the baker and all imbeciles of the world, went a tip of Tat's oily red hat


Meanwhile, back in the city


Huff and Puff elliptical man, tunes-in, to his friend on the screen
“What’s this about a deep-state?”, he asked
Pray tell me just what does it mean

I’ll tell you HP, said Huff no. 2
There's a group within our gov
They draw a regular check and do have a plan
To take away our man

"****-right ****-right", said Huffy
I've thought that too; I have the same take
And did you see on the channel this morning
That story about the weeding cake?

Try to remember riding your bike
When summers were too short
And the time until you felt heartache would be very long.
You pick up speed down that big hill then
Bam!
Pavement.

Now I wonder if this is falling.
If my pink Huffy prepared me for love.
In that split second
between bike and ground
(the one that makes you question why you were riding a bike in the first place)
You prepare for the pain and then
Bam!

After the break-up, make-up, *****-up,
Things get better.
Once that pain heals you get up and realize that you want to ride again.
You get a new bike, sit down and pedal.
You want to ride again
And feel the wind in your hair
Because its ******* beautiful.

She hushes me repeatedly
as if my voice could be– too loud
for these shrunken, elder walls
What voice can I revive to tell her
that this little place...reminds me...?

Ratchet up the memories  
the young mistakes
my welfare “townhouse”

as if my voice could be too loud?!

Where does anger go to say
These cheesy rugs remind me!
of the smoky halls, stoop-sittin’
head lice, **** roach
fumigated invasion
Music loud enough to blow pipes
induce trauma through the walls
Thud Crash
“Stupid ****!”
Knife-weildin’, drug-sellin’, boyfriend-of-a-future

A can of beer later...
with stress on hold
the smells of dinner, now—all fifteen of them!
Assault me through the front window
“Ya there yet?
...to this “cute little apartment, I mean?"


So it’s sold…
Someone else will wash windows, rake the yard
Shovel Massachusetts snow

Christmas lights come down
in my mind—
Running toward them still
Toes numb
Skates bouncin on my back
Sled firing off sparks against the sidewalk in my wake
Running and as always late
Mittens soaked, heavy
Like my eyes—


Mom and I
looking out this window for the last time
Looking out toward the daughter of the woods I was
Behind—me
the bride sinks
to the bare mattress—
“Was it really 57 years?
How can it be?”

since...clutching can opener and Coke
He scooped her up and through that door....
  
“How can it be?   Oh my….”

"You can always keep the memories."
she chirps to check the tears
                                                           ­                                                                 ­But I can’t taste them!
…Mom baking cookies
stew and dumplings on the stove
Snitching chocolate bits
waiting for the bowl
Impatient little helpers at her side

Colors slipping…
A child husks corn in sunlight
A blue Huffy gleams behind birthday candles
Sheets billow from the line

Sounds fading...
A choir of music boxes
before the Christmas carnage
Doing dishes in three-part harmony

I can barely wrap my words around our voices!

“You can always keep the memories”

Preamble to the dutiful decision
Hypothermic excuse
to dump the place

Street sign shrinking in the rear-view

Anyone can laud a sunny day
And lavish it with praise.
It's such an easy proposition
Amid warmth and golden rays.

But it is, I'd say, a refinéd taste,
When a day dawns bleak and grey,
To find some joy in heavy clouds
That bubble-wrap your day.

And even given pouring rain
That many see as vile
The drum of raindrops on the roof
Can bring to some a smile.

A wailing wintry driving blizzard?
Seems to most so rotten.
Yet for me I get a thrill
From a landscape wrapped in cotton.

Now a slush-and-sleet-filled day in March
Is a horrible kind of weather
I fear it seems to void my thesis
And brings to no one pleasure.

It erodes the city's state-of-mind
Optimism is diminished
Everyone is in a huff
And wants it to be finished.

Oh, for a bright day in July
With no one feeling huffy,
The golden sun to rule the sky
and clouds so big and fluffy.

They were just talking about you
right before you turned the corner.
Whispered words, hushed hurried huffy
little things. Like pinpricks on the back
of your neck.

Or worse. Maybe they weren't talking
about you. Nobody is talking about you.
Nobody FEELS the way you FEEL things.
All capital letters and **** and vinegar.
You are alone in your intellect and alone
in your
FEELINGS.

Things will be rough if we are disgruntled
disgruntled voice makes others Grumpy
Grumpy feelings are always ungracious
Ungracious mood swings are nasty and huffy.

Smile on the face cheers up all
All the people around us feel good
Good moments shared,gives happiness
Happiness ultimately enhances our mood.

Messy Bessy
Pouty fussy
Screaming crying always *****

Ugly Bessy
Huffy Puffy
Yelling punching kicking kitty

Silly Bessy
Loudy mouthy
Mommy madly gives a slappy

I miss the days
where my biggest concern was how to
carry a sixty-four ounce grape slushie
from the gas station
while riding my Huffy.

Still, not much has changed.
I'm still awful at planning ahead,
and I still act on impulse,
and I still can't ride a bike
with no hands. It feels like the scrapes
on my elbow are open.

Summer was never really my season.