Take a ride and you'll know.

I love riding my bike through the city at night... riding past pizza shops, I can smell the fresh garlic, the doughy crust of a perfect pie. The fragrances of fresh herbs waft out from Vietnamese pho houses, bringing to mind my fond memories of dinners with good friends... the shards of shattered beer bottles sparkle under streetlamps, headlights, moonlight... I encounter the people of the night; some walking aimlessly with no place to go, some walking from a place they wish never to see again. Some gesture and nod, or communicate some things unintelligibly, but I nod in firm reassurance that they have been heard, recognized, humanized. In some ways, we are the same: vagrant bohemians with dreams to fill our heads and pains to fill our hearts. We have dirty hands... we reach to grasp, something, anything... I bike past a penny, but I leave it alone, for not wanting to spoil the speed of my stride, and for hopes that it will be found by hands with less opportunity. I am one of the people of the night. I sleep under a roof and in a bed, but I, too, am an orphan... looking for a city to love, a hand to hold, a people to call my own.