When Susan came she knew better she was crying then.

And Susan picked up something (the tangle) when she headed for college. She was not wanting a bicycle then or the white plastic wicker bicycle basket with the pink and blue flowers on either side. They have yellow centers with white clean plastic. This plastic wicker basket was all plastic then. Then a training bicycle.

Susan almost forgot the bicycle on the train tracks far from her house and near her grandma's. Cover this with snows, someone said and she did, Susan did.

Susan laid in college beds now many different beds. every open eye led her to no asleep. The ceilings were all the same, all the beds were the same. Susan was not the same and neither her bedmate nor pillows. Susan did not know which was more home. She lay thinking with the ceiling then, then in college.

Eventually, Susan did know home in 20 years or 30, but this is not now and Susan is not now.

In college, Susan made love.

In college, Susan kept dreams of arching backs and spread legs. Rubbed thighs. Susan yes Susan. She sometimes walked to class in puddles. Not often to class but often enough she walked through but not walked, jumped over and into puddles.

When rains over day and raining a lot in Evergreen in Washington state the puddles were deep and well-made.

This was Washington state and all and all was wet. Wet and mushy and wet.

But wet can be at other states.

And wet can be at other college floors and bricks.

And Susan was not just at Evergreen. She went to SUNY.

When Susan went to SUNY she was not smiling. They said smile but she would not. She would look at the lights and the bricks and some people dancing and others bonging together, 15 in an open room after midterms, after finals and she would not bong, she would not smile.

Susan would not smile and that is that, yes that.

And Susan never forgot her white plastic wicker bicycle basket and green and pink training bike at the end of the tracks, no, never forgot it, but never quite thought about it either.

Susan once thought the lights in the puddles was the moon. She never wore glasses. This was not her eyesight. Just Susan forgot there was no moon out, she could not see it if there was. The moon always being blanketed by the buildings made Susan angry.

When her brother once asked, yes her brother Matt asked "Are you sleeping?" and Susan was not but said nothing as if she were, she lying on the couch and then Matt pushed her over. Susan bumped her head against the glass coffee table edge.

Her head bled and Susan bled. Her head and Susan were bleeding.

"Are you all right?" Matt asked and it was not all right. Susan runs into a field of grass where there is no pony and no one wants a pony, where there is no white plastic wicker bicycle basket on the green and pink training bike, where the lights in the puddles is only the moon.

© 1990 - 2003 Katharina Woodworth