It’s dusk. And dry. Boys in the neighborhood ride their bikes, back tires kicking up dust, spokes spinning like the cartwheels I turned that summer those kids disappeared. For hours every day, I too, vanished without explanation. The rails are better than school balance beams, I explained, coming home with blood on my elbows, cinders in my knees. My aunt clutched her rosary beads, prayed to Saint Nicholas. My mother hugged me. And then had nightmares. I felt trapped in a car trunk, she said to my father, sure I wasn’t listening. I didn’t understand the crime done so far away, the local girl and her kids now gone. I just practiced more — until my back was straight, until my arms locked tight, until I no longer fell. When my fingers burned on the August steel, I moved to the shade. Only the sumac noticed, bowing to my dismounts, applauding through the rustle of dry leaves. I didn’t stop until the rails trembled. I was sure ghosts were there, somewhere, making the metal beneath my fingers, my hands, my toes, tremble. Karen J. Weyant lives and teaches in Western New York. A 2007 Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, her most recent work can be seen or is forthcoming in 5 AM, Barn Owl Review, The Comstock Review, the minnesota review, and Slipstream. Her first chapbook, Stealing Dust, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in early 2009.