two arms

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on saturday, i woke up at 5:30am.
leanne said i looked old.
i felt old.

i took a sharpie and wrote a name on each forearm.

pumped up my bike tires and ate three bananas
and slipped on my purple and green jersey
and sat on a hard, hard seat
and rode 100 miles
again.
for cancer.
or in hatred of cancer.

with two women on my arms.
my wife, leanne, and my friend dan’s sister, suzy.

one alive and one not.

suzy died this summer
from a cancer, quickly, leaving
her husband and three young kids behind,
and a brother, who has always had a perfect
beard and a decent backhand, and
who is my friend.

(i wrote about him slipping and shattering himself
months ago on his way out to take care of her)

there’s a hill on the ride in moab called the big nasty.
3000 vertical feet in 7 miles.
not nice.  not nice at all.

every time i thought about getting off my bike and walking,
which was often,
i looked over at my arms.
i looked over at leanne and suzy.
and i kept pedaling.

on the drive from colorado with lydia
in the back of the minivan, we talked about canyons,
about how they used to not be there,
about how water and persistence
can eat through anything.

how water and persistence ate through thousands of feet of red rock
to sit at the bottom, finally, and be able to look up at what it had made,
the way we’ll look back at cancer someday.

and i just wanted suzy to know that she was with me for a day.
and that i took her to some beautiful places,
and that she kind of took me to some beautiful places too.

like the top.

like the top.

at the end of the ride, lydia was there blowing a noisemaker
so hard that she blew a hole in it.

rena was impossibly asleep.

and leanne was standing, cheering,
impossibly alive.

—–

it’s been two days

and i still can see the names,
fading a bit and purpling.

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