and you are sure you’re doing all this wrong. You commend yourself for stretching deeper than the old women on either side, you admire the tendons rippling in your foot and still, you can't figure out how to love. You don't smell it yet, but next week, if it’s still warm enough for bikes, their dying will certainly reach you. Always the grieving, even for the squirrels who escape, who remember where their past is buried. Is this your mother’s voice? Still overruling your own? It’s cuffing season—everyone is knitting their socks together, making sacrifices, waiting for the sun to stop trying so hard. You pedal faster past the browning flowers and hope
