Today I Bought A Bike, 2026

today I bought a bike and nobody clapped

no trumpets, no neighborhood kids circling like satellites,

just cash handed to a guy who once held my same interest and lost it like a failed prophecy,

casually saying have a good one as if this wasn’t

a small resurrection of my legs.

the last bike I loved was thirteen years old

blue paint chipped like bad teeth,

handlebars bent from curb jumps and gravity experiments,

freedom then was a mile that felt like a continent,

a friend’s house glowing at the end of the block

like a promised land of Mountain Dew and unfinished homework,

pedaling away from my own name,

my mother,

my own room with its posters tacked into drywall hope,

in fonts too brutal to read.

today I am thirty-one and freedom costs cash and a lock

and a helmet I will leave at home and pretend not to need,

but secretly bless with a small prayer,

today freedom is not escape but arrival,

showing up sweating to a place on purpose,

my body reintroduced to itself

through thighs and breath and the honest complaint of realization that art handling isn’t necessarily working out.

no car, no bubble, no sealed capsule of radio and coffee cup holders,

no windshield to keep the weather from flirting with my face,

the cold asking questions on my cheeks,

the wind tugging at my jacket like it wants to be remembered or given the time of day,

the sun acting like an old friend who never moved away,

still warm, still nosy, still touching me without permission.

I am visible again.

my breath is visible.

my mistakes are visible.

missed lights, shaky starts, wobbling dignity at intersections,

drivers looking at me like I am either brave or stupid, or that it’s my sole intention and life’s work to delay a stranger’s commute,

and I can’t tell the difference anymore.

my body has to work.

this is the quiet miracle.

this is the unpaid internship of being alive.

knees negotiating with gravity,

lungs bargaining for one more block, 

heart drumming like it’s late for something important,

muscles remembering ancient contracts they signed before I was born,

fighting against my brain to wash away the memory of my first broken arm.

at thirteen I rode to get away.

at thirty-one I ride to be here.

to feel the street talk back to my tires,

to feel potholes as punctuation,

to feel my own weight as proof,

to arrive smelling like effort,

to carry weather on my skin like a temporary tattoo.

god bless David for the conviction to reclaim something like this.

today I bought a bike

and it is not a toy,

it is a small, rolling, yes.

to the world as it actually is,

loud, cold, bright, breathing,

asking me to participate.

Like a Scab for an Extra Rub of Scrip, 2026

I keep thinking love is a job I forgot to quit

clocking in with a broken watch

and a card with more holes than paper to punch

calling it devotion

You didn’t love me back

you stood there while I emptied myself

like that was the point

like that was the show

ta-da!

I didn’t fight you when you hit me

I remember thinking

this must be what calm looks like

a man standing still while weather happens to him

I am a tired excuse

for me still apologizing

for bleeding in the wrong place

for making a mess of your evening

What kind of man learns how to disappear

and calls it commitment just because you know very well

how to spend money and I'm slick with making it

You were always asking

and I was always answering

until the questions ate the room

and the answers ran out

I called it patience because patience sounds holy

and being used sounds like a failure and I was trying not to fail

But you never liked the gallery

never liked the thing that made me breathe

said it took too much of me

as if I wasn’t allowed to belong anywhere but at your feet

I worked for you without wages without praise without even the dignity of being fired

the illusion that endurance was intimacy

I became the caretaker

and caretakers don’t get loved

they get used correctly

or replaced with another man to speak with while the caretaker worked

And now I don’t know

if I’d recognize love

if it didn’t hurt

if it didn’t ask me to prove myself with bruises

and quiet

thinking love should feel familiar

even when familiar means harm

I walked away

not because I was strong

but because there was nothing left to give you and nothing left to keep me there

Now it’s just me and this strange relief

this sadness that doesn’t lie

this silence that doesn’t hit back

I want love that doesn’t need my disappearance to function

I want love that doesn’t clock my hours or measure my usefulness or resent my aliveness

I just know I’m done going underground like a scab for an extra rub of scrip.

Spark Plug, 2025

I am changing the spark plugs in my wife’s car,

her white horse of errands and radio static mixed with rough idle.

My pants ripped across the thigh,

a scrape with no bleed,

our semi-healed suburban myth -

wrists aching, grease on the wedding band.

Denso! The irony. Japan, the factory father!

I pull the plug, charred black like his letters never sent,

engine misfiring like the Sunday calls that never came.

He made these - thirty years, molten metal, the math of disappearance.

He gave me socket wrenches, oil changes,

but not the language of keeping, only of leaving -

so I write new vowels in the air: stay, witness, soften.

My hands know bolts, but not how to say “you’re right.”

Fixing less than problems made.

Isn’t it damn poetic?

That the part that ignites combustion

the tiny prophet of power

burnt out, old, useless -

comes from the man who couldn’t hold flame

and now I remove it gently like an apology

and thread in a new one, bright, unlit.

I strike a match in her engine,

not to burn it down

but to go

further.