Bike Lane

All day long boys and girls and young professionals who could and probably do own cars ride bikes. They wear helmets. They wear backpacks with ten extra pockets and twenty extra straps. They fill the bike lane by the green strip where people who don’t sweat at work run. The runners wear high-priced toe shoes that make their bodies think they’re barefoot. If they went barefoot for real they would cut their feet on glass. There is no glass, no litter anywhere. People pick it up, city employees who haul it all away. They wear gloves. Their feet ache through the arches and their backs ache in the center when their work is over. Then they clock out, pick their babies up from daycare, and board the bus for home. The babies will go to college and make something of themselves, but not today. Today they are heavy.