My Black Back Pack

How can I not write about my pack, my burden-my needs-my failure from before. They all think I'm nuts all this weight on my back. "It's harder you know. How do you do it? Why did you do it?" I smile not knowing exactly how to answer. Do I give them a witty response? Most people shy away from the sobering truth of things to occupy their minds with unimportant distractions.

Short entertaining stories of adventure is what they crave. So that is what I give them. I paint over the truth with grand gestures, making them actors in my stories until, eventually, they feel a part of my experiences on the road. They laugh and ask questions. They start to turn thin with boredom. Now they too have a story, "The Stranger on a Mountain Bike" riding across the country with a huge back pack.

Black and radiating heat from the sun
It can hold no more inside its seams
More weight is added strapped tight around it increasing the burden
Increasing the weight
Bringing its bearer toward his fate

A tarp and tires, tools and a fishing pole.  Excited by attention 

the story compels the listeners to ask questions and laughter

thinning with boredom.  
Tell us another.  Like kids around a campfire.  Tell us more of this

man...
They can't, you see
They don't know the answer.  
The pole for fishing, tires for his bike 
The tools for fixing and the rest I don't know why. 

Maybe all of these wrong.  
They are only the glint of your sunglasses that keep you from seeing

...my 
eyes.
It is everything that should be nothing
The nothing that beats you to the ground
The nothing that makes you forget why you are around.  
It is heavy, it is cumbersome, it stinks of memories and sweat
It slows my progress but I can not let it go yet
Without its weight driving me, I would slip into the mud
I dig into it every day dealing with its contents, most of which I

wary of...
A chance not to unpack it, if only for a day
Gives me peace in pretending it's not there.  
Nothing weighing on my body, my soul, my mind for a moment
I can breathe freely and stretch without its bindings that so

reluctantly relinquish their hold on me
Standing back, cut away from this giant black tumor.  Starring at it

as if knowing it would begin to speak, adding yet another reminder.

"Why take me off?  I will always be here.  Here for you.  I have food

that will sustain you.  I can clothe you when the cold eats at you.

You know...
You need me just like I need you."

I hate your logic, your manipulation of fact
I can not argue, not yet, not now.
I need you for another reason you have not thought of yet
Not even a brief consideration by you.  That you would make me strong.
I am stronger every day and see the even greater experience pass me

by due to your weight.
Yes, you weigh me down, but not like you used to.
My feet nailed to the ground no more.  You grow to compensate.

Increasing 
the load, but you underestimated me from the start.  I chose to take

you on. I decide what stays in and what comes out
You weigh more than the beginning because I am hauling you about

I've thought about leaving you stranded in your own helplessness but

I am not quite done using your torment of me to make me stronger
I will carry more to remind me.  It will be harder than before and I

will handle it all

The pack sits quietly.  I look down at it knowing it feels my glare.
Quiet.  No sound but a creak or a moan from the plastic buckles and

nylon straps.  Now I stand freely with my pack on my back.

Perhaps it is best I don't try to explain the truth to these people.
They wouldn't understand what I live with every day.
That's fine.
That's okay.

At least I know the difference
From before...
First it was weakness
Caring, carrying to much
Now I choose to grow stronger from what I've had to do, and did,

Undone...
So I ride
A long disappearing road.  Slipping into thin air thick with heat
I drink it into my lungs struggling to find oxygen in all that

humidity.
Not wanting to breathe any more because it's so thick like trying to 
swallow down medicine that sits in your throat choking you with it's 
healing power.  

So I drink it in and swallow hard
Trying to disregard...
The desert sand in my throat
Sweat pouring out of me like so many tears of my broken heart
I need to replace what I've lost
Hot water flows into me.  
Hot like the sun that changed its worth.  It stares.  It glares.

This sun 
Wears on me, but not like the weight on my back...

So I ride.