thoughts from the back of a bike (itty bitty thoughts)

There is endless chatter inside my head but a motorcycle is loud enough to drown that out.

“Wanna go for a ride?” I asked him.

“Where to?” 

We don’t officially decide on a destination but it doesn’t take long before I’m on the back of his bike and we’re off.

**

We play a game where we come to a stop sign and he asks me which way to go.

Right.

Left. 

Straight.

And it’s amazing how you’ve lived in the area for years and still end up on roads you’ve never been on.

Right.

Left.

Straight.

I’m sure I look like a dog with its head out a car window, face all goofy and screwed up in the wind, trying to see all the things whipping past. How big the sky is. How the wind feels on your skin. How the colors of the autumn trees pop against the color of the sky.

I wonder if dogs worry about the riots and the testing and the numbers and the mainstream media and the trials and the overtime. I wonder if dogs worry about prepping and money and masks and what, if anything, actually matters anymore and what, if anything, will make it through.

I wonder if dogs wonder about the fighting and the name calling and the loneliness.

I wonder if dogs ever just want to be done with everything.

“Which way?” he asks.

“Straight.”

And we continue down the road with the roar of the bike and the roar of the wind and I decide that these roars are the best sounds to drown out the commotion you didn’t start and don’t know how to stop. 

**

Every time we’re on the bike, he takes me out for ice cream. This time it’s a place where you order “one scoop”, but find out one scoop just means they fill the bowl.

“Will you still take me out for ice cream when I’m 80?” I ask.

“Yep.”

And I dip my spoon into the ice cream and think about how there are many things right now that are wrong.

But

I decide

there are still things that are right.

There is ice cream. 

And there is a sun that still hangs in a sky that’s bigger than we can completely take in, and I can still watch it all from behind him on a bike.

And as long there is ice cream and sun and sky and him, things will be okay.

  — Amy Dingmann, 9-23-20