(Each of these I remember-s can also be replaced with I am thankful for-s because each one of these is a little infinite miracle.)
I remember lost causes and found stories.
I remember waking up my body with the road bowing the string of the bike tire.
I remember Wednesdays.
I remember curving sweetly alongside the river creek and whispering good morning to the rocks who barely slept the night before.
I remember remembering things I once forgot, like what it means to move and where my legs are.
I remember that my life now is eight or more hours outdoors.
I remember how others want this dream and I am alive in it.
I remember telling myself not to forget this.
I remember mountains acupunctured by spruce and firs.
I remember brown trees, the dead kind, and green trees, the alive kind.
I remember the anticipation that just maybe the next bend could be the top of the mountain.
I remember the next next bend, and the next next next bend, and maybe the top would be the one after that.
I remember looking into the childhood toy—the one where you click the button, and a new slide appears-- and this time the slide is another color of the mountainside with each press of the foot pedal.
I remember loving.
I remember flossing my body with the wind.
I remember singing with the downhill.
I remember two sheep.
I remember fifty sheep crossing the road.
I remember hundreds of sheep chortling in the valley.
I remember my body sinking into my legs, carving my knee, into my heels.
I remember flow.
I remember an invincibility of sorts.
I remember white road chalk blurring into words never said.
I remember a truce and the acceptance that words could never say all that there is.
I remember Utah summers.
I remember opening my mouth with only trees to swallow my laughter.
I remember my shadow playing musical chairs around my bike.
I remember absence just as much as I remember presence.
I remember slick sunscreen gripping handlebars.
I remember eating a bug.
I remember my arms a bronzer shade of human after the sun came out.
I remember writing this poem in my head at mile 70.
I remember wishing.
I remember thanking.
I remember velcro too tired to hold on any longer and my toes freed from clip-in shoe jail.
I remember letting myself melt into grass.
I remember a hundred thousand infinities in a day and holding on to the few I can carry before I let go.
-Vivian
