Come, let's go.
We ride!
In the night.

On the hills, high.
With joy in our hearts,
Lips, draped in smiles.

Our troubles behind,
Into a future;
As bright,
As the moonlight.

My dad and I would spend sunny afternoons
riding our bicycles
through my suburban neighborhood.
We would ride down my street
until we reached the sidewalk that diverged into two paths
and neither of them were less traveled by
as we always ended up taking both.
The right path leads to the small waterfalls
just past the basketball court
where my brothers and their friends
would play pick-up games.
Riding across the tiny bridges is a moment of brief bliss
as the sounds of the water rushing reaches your ears
and drowns out everything else.
We’d maneuver to the giant lake
filled with brightly colored kois
and serene storks standing out on the rocks.
Following the curve of the water
we would end up in a private neighborhood
where the blacktop is so shiny and smooth
that your wheels glide across the entire street.
And you can go fast
since it’s silent
and no cars come barreling down the road.
Somehow, we’d end up at that beginning sidewalk
and now it’s time to go to the left.
Over here, there’s a small playground
where my dad would chase my siblings and me
and I would hide in the tube of the slide.
We could spend hours there
on our spaceship
trying to outsmart Darth Vader and the dark side.
Just past the park, we’d reach the stretches of green belts
lacing their way through the streets
and the bushes I flew into
when first learning how to ride my bicycle.
We'd take a left after the dip in the sidewalk
ending up back on our street
and deciding that it’s getting late
once the sky turns pink and orange.
We’d end up back at the cookie-cutter house
that I don’t live in anymore
but part of it is still mine.
I wonder if the kitchen is still red
and if the guest bathroom still smells like lemons.
I contemplate knocking
only to remember that there’s a new family living there
making memories in our pool
and playing in the basement.
I smile, hoping that maybe
they will ride the same sidewalks I grew up on.
I paste these memories into a poem
but there is really no need
because remembering the twists and turns
of my old neighborhood
is just like riding a bike.

I sat awake on the back seat
Stared at the window, harnessed heat
As the lamp-lit city whizzed by,
The untouched dusk still in the sky.

Closed my eyes as it gently swayed,
Then listened to the silence fade,
Speed cushions, the quiet highways,
The sleepy tires, its steady phase.

I missed the constant compliance,
Radio waves' static silence,
The roads rolled on, no fuss or rush,
An empty mind, all my thoughts hushed.

They were asleep, no sound of day,
And on the car's back seat I stay,
As urban cat eyes shine, blink fast,
A few more hours to home at last.