Sitting twisted like so, top tube eating into my ass, is a torturous misery.

Yet that hypnotic tyre whir, the roar of wind as we move fast enough to cut through air makes the pain worth it.

Speed is as addictive a drug as sugar. I never knew a kid that never risked their teeth for both.

The moment I saw Bulumko’s bike propped up against a wall a butterfly had crawled out my heart and flapped about my stomach.

Even when I was told (in not so many words) that it was cursed, unyielding as a wild horse, I never really heard the warnings.
Didn’t care that I could only ride the bike with Bulumko pedalling and steering as I sat perched and twisted in front of him.

My mind had already fixated on this moment this sensation this delicious, delicate balance between
thrill and disaster.

When we tipped towards the latter it was like falling into a nightmare.
The tyre whir suddenly cut to silence, a mangled pause.
The brutal sound of bodies hitting the ground hard, the unreal reality of metal and bags of flesh skidding across gravel road like stone on water.

Surreal winded shock before the body finally lets breath and pain back in.
Sitting up dazed, in the middle of the road, it takes a few more breaths for me to untangle what that brief flash was about.

Quite the good scene, self-explanatory one shoe, my shoe, loud as thunder and lightning, caught between the front wheel spokes.
Clear enough to make a child crazy with guilt,
Bulumko stirring slowly, from his slumber.

I’m no Dr Frankenstein
where there’d been blind ambition to be God I desperately scrambled for absolution
reflexively fumbling for the lie in my head, ‘’…your leg pushed against mine while pedalling that’s why things happened…”
where there’d been euphoria for me there was terror
where there’d been a beautiful young man there was a monster, struggling and failing to get to its feet.

Muttering unintelligibly not heeding its name, ‘’Bulumko?’’
The horror. The merciless guilt, at the sight of his face, skin scraped clean off leaving an inferno of red.