Motorcycle

The streetlights cast shadows as I ride.  A man on a motorcycle appears, attenuates, is gone.  Another.  Another.  They race on, splinters of night, flaked from me like chips of flint.  They are faster than I; I cannot win. 

The sky twinkles, and grows dimmer. 

They are stealing the stars, I realize, one by one, riding on tenebrous wheels into the dark between the stars.  They will make a universe of shadows, and there they will rule. 

There is so little light to begin with. 

But I don’t stop.  I keep riding. 

I can only hope to get home first.