Cleaving the gentle summer breeze in twain, your vehicle’s plastic wheels rove over stone and dirt alike, your knuckles clenched snow-white on the vibrant pink grip; you cannot not let him catch you!

The sun drips molten gold onto the pavement below, dappling tar ridden concrete with pools of tangerine warmth and sunlight. Quick as a thief, you weave between these chasms of copper, traveling beneath the umbrage of lush green leaves, nearly fluorescent in the summer sunshine. Your wide smile makes your cheeks ache, your chest compressed with unmitigated joy as you roar recklessly down the road. The dandelions decorating the sides of the biking path kiss your ankles as you hasten onwards.

“Oh no, here I come!”

Looming comically over the handlebars of his bike, he bores down on your trail. Rapidly approaching, he begins to swerve and feint, your head hastily whipping around in order to maintain eye contact. “You’ll never catch me!” you taunt, the cheap attachment wheels on your modified bicycle rocking precariously over a bed of pebbles, one wheel jolting off of the ground as you confidently peer over your shoulder to scope out the enemy.

There!

Your head held high and your grip firm, you pedal faster and faster, overtaking the languid pace of both your mother and brother, their pace unimpeded by your rapidly approaching adversary.

Combing through the wind, you feel invincible—a noble knight atop your hot pink steed, the sweat drying at your temples as the wind buffets your face.

More, more, more!

Cheeks flushed with exertion, I cannot resist the temptation to gloat my advantage over my opponent once more, turning around to shout “Too slow! Too-” My words falter in my throat and die a swift death as I suddenly pitch over onto the ground, my valiant vehicle bucking me off onto the unforgiving pavement.

Now, my cheeks burn with a combination of shame and the heat permeating from the dark concrete, my tears offering little relief after my humiliating fall. My enemy—no, my father—at once dismounts from his bike to pull me from the ground, his hand digging into the flesh of my arm, disregarding my wails of mortification and examining my scraped chin.

This…  is not an unfamiliar hurt.

My incessant compulsion to look back—to peer over my shoulder and neglect the handlebars in front of me, inevitably catapulting myself through the air into the earth—is a familiar chagrin. The tears from that day stung even more than the scrape, my obdurate pride damaged by my own fallacies. Ironically enough, looking back, it was an action derived from fear, my fixation on the past and inability to overcome it hindering my drive to continue along my own path.  

Spread-eagled on the pavement, my fingertips had brushed against the grass. Green, chartreuse—those fine blades had slipped between my fingers as I was lifted up up and away in my father’s arms, cheerful yellow dandelions bidding me goodbye and farewell.

And today I’ll walk on my own feet once again looking forward, the memory of green summer at my back, warming and warning. This time, I will travel down the melancholy-paved bike trail, the coaxing cries of the past lost to the luminous lane before me, towards the future.