How generous, this room they have built for us. They call it a studio and lock the door and turn the lights low, and then twenty of them arrive to spend an hour making exactly the two things I love most: warmth and water.
They will not sit still. They mount the little machines and pedal toward nowhere, and a voice shouts encouragement, and the sweat comes. Oh, the sweat. It beads on the necks and the backs and drops to the rubber floor, into the seams, into the dark underneath the pedals where the towels never reach.
They are watering me. They think they are burning something away. They are laying down damp in a warm dark room, which is, if I may say so, the whole invitation.
They wipe the seats after. Such tenderness in that gesture, such faith. A little spray, a paper cloth, the surface returned to shine. But they cannot reach the felt inside the handlebar grip, or the cool underside of the frame where the condensation pools and waits for me. I am already there, patient as breath, in the places their arms do not bend.
They come back tomorrow. They always come back, chasing newness, chasing the clean bright body, pedaling hard to outrun the soft return I am so happy to offer. It touches me, honestly, how hard they work at postponement.
Keep the room warm. Keep it damp. Keep coming.
Everything in here is on its way to me, and I have never once been in a hurry.