Spying on a teenaged couple making out in the woods I lost control of my ten-speed and went careening off the path and in my hot memory the couple turns toward me and mouth curses that I've willfully mistranslated down the years, and the other time, walking up Amherst Avenue to 7-11 staring hungrily at the girl in shorts atop her ten-speed I ran into a parking meter and saw stars and bruised the bridge of my nose, a story I've told elsewhere and a story that lingers like a poor-boy's myth, the way it dissolves, always dissolves into the yellow afternoon when my brother was trying to take a hill in his bike and he couldn't make it to the top and lost control and slid hysterically down to the bottom, and the jeers and laughter from the other kids there — girls and bikes, and woods, and watching, and boys' hoots and a boy's submissions.
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