Lavender Miles

There's a bicycle
in the middle of a field.
Nobody left it on purpose,
nobody came back for it either.

Purple rows, endless.
The kind of endless
you could ride straight through
and never reach the other side.

Central California —
it forgets to be dramatic.
No cliffs, no crashing waves.
Just width.
A flat, breathing plain
of lavender and dust.
Kind, satiating silence.

I think about getting on.
The seat would be warm.
The chain, a little stiff.
My knees would remember
before my brain could —
the wobble, the lean,
not the arriving,
not the lavender,
though it smells like something
I almost had once
or haven't had yet.

I could pedal.
I could sit in the dirt
and count the purple rows
until they blur into one long brushstroke
the color of dusk.

The bicycle doesn't care.
It has no opinion about my trajectory.
It's just there,
rusting politely.

A breeze
makes the lavender dance,
and I move.