Bicycle

I was eight when you came home one August
and told me to look inside your car’s trunk:
a bicycle was there,
a shimmering, splendid BMX for which you’d
shelled out five hundred bucks.
Not bad for a middlebrow, suburban lawyer, eh?
You said, and I knew for the first time
how truly you loved me.

Not bad, I said, and mounted it at once
to pedal past your big hands.
The first few forward moves were shaky but
I finally managed a trajectory
controlled by me alone
powered by my hands and legs
along my own chosen road.

You never let on if you had been afraid for me,
and right there and then
I realized our secret deal
that was to go on long after I had outgrown this bike:
that it was my duty to be brave for you,
and it was yours to never ask me if I was scared.

At eighteen I am having troubles
enough to scare
a battalion of men:
cars, credit cards, concert tickets,
coming out.
Sometimes I get so scared I think of
pushing a bullet through my brain,
a Smith & Wesson at my temple, a swift,
categorical pain. Nothing to it
but blood to be mopped the next day.

But everytime I see you, I’m reminded
of the deal we have made, of the bike
and the secret words: Be brave.

You have earned your keep so far and stayed
silent. You never asked me if I was scared.

How I wish you could read me well and see
beneath the brave young boy
who knew his spin turns and speed,
there is a shivering child
aching to give up his balance,
aching to be asked, Are you scared?
Would you like to tilt and fall down now?
And I would nod,
and cry,
fall,
trusting you would catch me, hug me,
and tell me that same joke about
the middlebrow, suburban lawyer
not being bad.