I have never wept while biking, but I am crying now, my eyes stinging in the cold as I race at breakneck speed away from Swan and that insane granite ass. I am angry, my rage building so fast and so hard that it forces tears through my narrow lids in this horrific icy wind. I don’t feel sad, just vacant and defeated. I am cycling faster than I ever have, weaving through traffic and tearing through red lights. Cars honk and come dangerously close.
I am biking up the West Side, toward Auntie Flora’s. I don’t care who she thinks I am or how awful she was in the past to my dead mother. I simply want to curl up like a cat at her feet and sleep. Eat sardines on crackers while Lottie reads to us. Fall into a vat of her nutty memories and drift somewhere far off. I can’t go home right now.
I p
