I take corners on my fixie like I’m an ice-skate carving my brother’s kid’s name into a giant bottom lip, off-balance and my knee’s on the pavement almost. I actually called my nephew today before lapping around the nature area, around campus, through, I mean over, the river’s many cool bridges. I told him Happy Birthday and just nailed it, told him I’m Proud and felt it go directly into the phone. He’s taller than me, like two 80's Pistas reassembled, fresh-paint-smell, piled up. With the high-school freshmen boys, he’s a hit; cut jaw for eighth-grade. Plus Abercrombie skin. He finds holding hands at the movies as great as his pep band cover of the White Stripes. Riding in the lane with the on-coming, riding into a parking lot, skid-stopping – I dig that, too. Before I hung up, I waited for my nephew to say Good-Bye first. He almost didn’t. We paused forever – like sometimes folks pause forever – and then I said it and then he said it, and now I’m on the steepest hilltop looking over everything, which includes: a labradoodle on a leash in a bandaged hand, a Laundromat, and finally a ramp I might ramp.
Austin Hayden
www.90sMegRyan.com
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