Our Flat Tire

Remember the time you told me how much you wanted a bike so that you make it to class on time and go exploring to improve your bad sense of direction and feel the wind in your hair?

Remember the way your blue eyes lit up when you saw the brand new blue bike I bought for your birthday so that you could be independent?

Remember the day you told me you went for a ride down Shook and a metal shard from the construction on campus gave you a flat tire and you had to walk all the way back?

Remember how we spent nineteen minutes trying to fit it in the back of my coup but ended up borrowing your roommate’s pick-up to go pick up the right size tube to fix the tire?

Remember how you wanted to ride back but I begged you not to because you didn’t have a helmet?

Remember when I tried you teach you how to drive stick so I could put my hand on your hand on the shifter knob and the awkward silence that followed?

Remember how that obscene lyric broke the ice and how we laughed for what seemed like two and a half semesters?

Remember when you were so excited to have a working bike again that you rode it into the foyer of our building and almost ran over the neighbors stepping out of the elevator?

Remember how I would look up to your balcony and watch it rust next to the chair you would do your homework in when the weather was nice enough and the potted bamboo plants your sister gave you to take care of?

Remember how I didn’t see you for months and every time I called to say “hi” you said you had to go and when I asked who you were with you just answered, “The boy who popped my tire.”

Remember when I gave you your independence, fought so you could keep it?
Remember when you gave yourself to the boy who tried to take it away?