She said “calm down, it’s just a bicycle,”nWell I said, “it’s not as if I’d expect you to know,nI mean, it’s not as if I think you’d understand,nThis is my insurance plan.”nAnd we’d been lost and called cops on the shadows,nAnd thought it was a way to feel safe in the dark,nBut it wasn’t.nAnd the thought that our right to feel free was contingent,nOn the places we walked wasn’t fair to begin with,nAnd I’d been walking back and forth for my whole life,nAnd thought of distance as an indicator,nOf the things we can’t reach for our limitations,nThough speed was suggested, the alleged way of,nCrossing that space to your destination,nThey said “you go out, start the investigation.”nnSo lost again in the rain on fourth street,nThere was a chain, not of events (those blurred)nBut of a broken bike in an unknown town,nThat whispered “it’s time you learned about exploration.”nAnd it went Fairview, Maple, Waldron, Gist,nAnd separated only by the shadows of the summer,nDowntown melted and I stepped out past midnight,nInto a world of idle roads and streetlights,nAnd I thought “this is what it’s like to feel in control.”nAnd I remember, feeling freer in the cold outside,nThrough wind, down streets on a dark night ride,nThinking “distance only is as it’s defined.”nAnd all this talk of taking matters into our own hands,nWas embodied by the passing pavement under,nAnd embodied in a way we could understand.