Vertigo

My mother is terrified of bridges. When we used to take family bike rides she would walk her bike across every bridge, staring straight ahead with her jaw clenched and her shoulders stiff. She would scream at me if I kept riding, (for my own safety of course ) and make me slow down to walk with her. She would tighten her dry, raspy fingers around my wrist and I would stare at the traffic flashing between the cracks in the boards of the wooden overpass. I would image my fear pulling down cinder blocks and supports, and all of us falling into the stream of cars honking below. We would be blood splotches on asphalt and look like those squished fairies I had in a book at home.
After I had learned where nearly every bridge in the city was, I started to get sick flashes in my stomach when we would ride near one. Eventually I took my Dad's tool box - hammer and all - to my bike, and that put an end to those family bike rides. I still feel nauseous when I cross bridges, and have decided to never have children. I have known for a long time that I, like my mother, cannot pass on any kind of good.


Get off your Bike to Cross the Bridge

My mother’s vertigo was menstrual
she thought fear a phallic fix, felt
cloth that cloaked my callous self
a virgin noosed by vanity

She moaned dire musings in the dark:

bridges are breaking she breathed down my back
edges crumble and darling you’ll stumble

I won’t ever forget or forgive your
leaning low over open air
handing your raw heart to the herons
that circle and cry and keep you convinced
now the craven need never know height.