The Bike
By alexwritings
- 219 reads
It stands in a corner
by a trellis
where a single nettle splinters the air.
They told me to cut it off
as its owner had died
last month.
Suicide.
He had shared this courtyard;
used it for barbecues
and drying shirts.
He’d even started growing veg,
or so I’m told;
each harvested tomato
a ruby ingot in an ice-white saucer.
I lift the bolt-cutters
kicking my way past garden junk;
the fibrous remains
of a Christmas tree
and scaffolding joints
piled and angular like old bones.
With one chomp it’s off.
Disassociated.
Now it lays twisted on the scrubby lawn.
He had bought this bike
when things felt good;
when the fissures in his thoughts
had filled with gold,
and life’s pains had paused
to freeze-frame static.
But, even then, he must’ve realised
that unhappiness
was never gone but squatting,
gargoyle-like, the other side
of the mind’s stud wall;
that dark note in him
never fell truly silent
no matter how subtle the eddy
of a mood’s gyre.
I wheel the bike out to the street.
The last I heard it was seen
outside the university union; two tie-dyed
headbands over the handlebars.
Lucky charms.
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And within this bike there is
And within this bike there is life, the things left behind.
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