Acceptance

It shamed you to realize your limitations,
how fallible bodies can be, 
how you cannot resist aging.

Embarrassed to be sitting in the back of the ambulance,
your knees skinned from the asphalt, 
your bike jersey torn.

In the car, while the others were riding,
you said don’t tell mom
and I promised loyalty.

After the trip came to an end,
the closure rising like a crescendo 
through the Blue Ridge Parkway,

your little bike odometer
giving us the final count,
all the miles stretched

out from Indiana to North Carolina,
the seas of corn and mutilated barns,
the old river homes and mailboxes,

the nameless small towns
that could only leave
one collective impression,

all the miles came to rest
outside the hotel that took our tired bodies.
There, when the desk clerk asked about our trip

(you were still in bike shorts and fluorescent yellow)
you gave it up so easily, spilled the story,
how you fainted on day four,

how you said I guess 
I’m not as young as I thought
and how the telling 
was okay.