The wheels of my bicycle turn

Grinding into the trail as if to tell the dirt where it has been

The spokes a silver flash in the gathering darkness

My hands curled around the handlebars until the rubber begins to sweat

If “Look ma, no hands!” was an option for the unbalanced

I’d creep ten greedy digits towards the sky, when it is the bluest blue, inhabited by the grazing of slow, full clouds

or

when dusk has stolen the azure summer

and light evacuates as the not quite night steals into the world’s ceiling, unasked, uncalled for, the moon its pied piper

I would take my palms and cup the stars like apples, pluck clouds by their tails, leave them in a basket for you

I’d give you the wicker filled with stolen atmosphere, the sunset stained and speckled with a side of the fallen rain reborn as mist

I’d give these to you with the same thieving hands that abandon handle bars

But alas, no Creator deemed it fit for a human to snatch from Its domain

the finite stretch of my arms a precaution as property investment

even gods protect their galleries behind velvet rope

The tininess of my flesh body renders me irrelevant in cosmic sight

And so, in my simple mortal ways I return these receptacles of want, guilty of their criminal touch, to the slippery handlebars

My eyes steal what my hands cannot

My heart beats like a felon against the cage

the blood circulates so I may be pure to worship the sky properly, just the act of living is cleansing

Or so I’d like to believe

The handlebars fade to paper and the cuffed wrists take refuge in the pen, substituting the golden key for ink of similar purpose

The precious, liquefied escape bleeds onto the paper

and slowly, slowly

a gift is being wrought

Melded by language

wreathed in leaves, burning clean incense

warding off evil spirits

even if they are me

This present, a talisman

Back pocket charm, souvenir for the time our paths crossed

You’ll forget me like the precise shade of the sky as it cartwheels throughout the day

For me, through this loophole, I reclaim the heavens, triumphant

But then the CHERUBS come to bless me in their cheeky ways

as they flit to and fro about the reconstruction, chattering about my work

“The imitator,” they chitter

“Fraudulence, sub-par, no-good!”

words are fleeing from me like ghosts at the dawn

I have always been worth my weight in these words

“Sub-par!”

And suddenly

“No-good!”

I’m weightless

(Look ma, no hands!)

Watch me

as I dig my heels into zenith and tear the world like wallpaper

Watch me

as I paste it over my shortcomings

Cover it in repentance and apologies

Hiding and exposing

At the very end, this is all I can give

I sacrifice,

I offer,

I birth and I orphan

With all my love,

my poetry,

in a nice wicker basket