My steamboat of a vehicle crumbled around a street corner, threaded into a mosaic
by the summer sunlight seeping through the canopy, shuddering as if held together by
sinews. I laughed, snowcapping my knuckles on the steering wheel.
Wind slipped its tendrils through the crack in the window, coaxing my hair into my eyes as if
trying to blind me, veer me into the ditch so that it could flow uninterrupted.
The concrete shimmered as the sheer heat throbbed and groped from the earth, cursing the
cement with ants upon dried-up nightcrawlers.
Looming statuesque and constant, my arthritic Chevrolet gurgled over the porous asphalt,
following the faded chalk of the old tires which treaded there before.
I stuck my finger between the duct-tape keeping the foam on my seat together and probed,
maybe for a crusty gum-wrapper or a
lost tooth.
The amber pedestrian warning lights pulsed, and I pitifully squeaked to a stop.
This time a pair of kids with mohawk helmets miserably heaved on their bicycles, tense and furrowed as
they chugged over the crosswalk.
Enviable in that their pain somehow seemed lesser in their youth.
They pedaled further, squinting past the humid, anvil summer sky
Legs burning and pumping as they brushed the thoughtless oak leaves with their thin
shoulders and wanted.