Nuclear Polio Vaccination

Perhaps I would’ve pedaled harder if I knew what lay on the other side for me.

I could’ve used the extra motivation for biking in the blistering heat–back and forth, back and forth.

My biggest motivator was fear of failure.

I had to get up, get out, and get something.

I had to see the world, make love to exotic women and smoke fine grades of dope– the key to that I knew; was an education–

At each level existed a new threshold to cross and  new goals to achieve.

But nothing could prepare me for the fear I felt 20 years later,

leaving the hospital that day with a new life in our car.

It was as if the past 20 years had happened to someone else

because nothing mattered more than getting him home safe.

That was as far as I had thought things through.

I took a deep breath, hit my blinker, and took a turn out of the hospital parking lot;

back out into the world that existed beyond the freeway.

~Edward Austin Robertson

Tags: 20 years later, Brief Moments of Shared Experience, Edward Austin Robertson