An Object, A Person
His bike was there on the railings.
I saw it one day on the railings, chained.
Locked
Against the bars,
Subsumed by city.
I nearly walked past it.
Maybe I had before.
But today
I saw it.
He was gone
Now,
Two months ago.
Forever.
I thought I knew where the pieces of him were.
Around his house,
On walls,
In boxes,
Other people’s homes,
But his bike was here.
(People, striding past).
Maybe, left just before he went.
Locked up.
No one thought of it,
Forgotten.
Part of him
We didn’t remember.
But it was there,
As I walked through the city in the afternoon.
Shoved against a railing,
Front wheel
Yanked up, off the ground.
Two months, held like that.
The realization came in stages,
Abstract recognition, remembering: Who?
And then: oh.
I didn’t know what to do.
To leave, just walk away,
That didn’t seem right.
It was him, in a way,
That bike.
I rode with it,
And I remember, once, I rode it.
An object
A person.
So I just stood there.
