There splays the body of a

bicycle, its gears gasping through rust

caked by years of rain,

through memories of wind and speed and sky,

 

memories of colorful explosions,

fury and frustration and delight, and fear,

and fear of fear

sprayed from aerosol cans

under the watchful eye of limitless speechless stars;

 

through pounding rains of memories,

through memories of blank walls cracked with time and windows that could not crack

while bars made them silent.

Between those bars there flickered glimpses

of bodies,

that groped in the dark for other bodies like their own

and watched and hated and loved and feared

but never exploded their colors on the wall,

 

or on the cave, or makeshift tent,

or the fabric tied together with spit and string,

that hid a bloodied face

that breathed and breathes the dust of anonymity

with eyes closed and hand raised,

afraid to streak the blood on fabric lined with light,

and to feel that light from without and

to imagine it within, bright and hot

 

like the blood that streaks the half-lit face

of the body that aches with shackles,

that body made of barbed wire

that turns her head upward and prays for an open mouth and working tongue,

to pierce through the cracks in the wall

through the iron-barred cage,

the cage made of recycled bicycle parts and old gears

and beating human hearts that bleed like

a face in the dark.

 

She cannot hold the slippery light of freedom in her hands

or in her wings or wheels or cracks or gears

 

or, out of fear, cannot want to.