What Gets Taken

The space where it was is still visible.

Three weeks it sat there,

the bike that wasn't mine,

locked to the fence outside,

and I got used to seeing it.

Got used to the way the rust

was spreading like a bruise.

Got used to knowing

someone was coming back for it.

This morning: gone.

Just the marks left behind.

Faint lines where the frame had worn

the paint to white.

A ghost on the fence.

The exact shape of something I never owned

but somehow started to keep.

I keep looking at the space.

The way you look at an empty chair

after someone's left the room.

Like it might rearrange itself.

Like the shape might suddenly refill.

It's absurd.

It wasn't mine.

It was someone else's forgotten thing,

someone else's neglected bike,

someone else's problem

that became a small fact

I incorporated into my morning—

oh, the bike is still there,

oh, someone's going to come for it soon,

oh, it's been three weeks.

Now the fence is clean.

Now there's nothing.

And I'm standing here

with this feeling

like I lost something I never had,

like something I was minding

finally got minded by someone else,

like I was just the temporary keeper

of an absence that made itself

a little bit real.