Bike

There is a bike locked up to a 30 minute parking sign across the street, kickstand up and its gloss-coat not leaning against the worn post. These last couple of days, as I walk onto and from my fifth floor balcony, the bike has caught my eye. I stop and look down at it. Out there, parked, the streets empty. The sky has been clear, blue and the sun is strong these last few quarantine days. The orange bike has been parked there since Tuesday afternoon, next to a teenage tree whose crown is puffed up big, thick with leaves so green of new spring. Its bright color above that orange insect of hard edges fills my eyes as I watch those two temporary neighbors (the conversations they must have); the aura of the tree's cool chlorophyll smell doesn't reach the balcony.

It's a city bike. I saw the woman park it there. But it isn't really a "city" bike, is it? They aren't public bikes, a company owns and manages them.

And somehow, during these locked down days, in a time of deliberate immobility and willed restraint, that bike holds stories inside the shine of its steel frame. There is a city down there—under the bike: concrete sidewalks and paved streets. The city is empty of people and crowded by them at the same time, its inhabitants are all here, just inside. Grids of empty streets for the bike to roll down on its pneumatic feet, air captive in those two round rubber lungs that allow it to roll on air, and the people of those streets packed in the million self imposed cages of compassion and care and anxieties and fears, doing their part. In a flat plane, adventure calls from every direction from the orange bike with a metal basket on its handle bars. The volume of its call up to this height is so much potential. Limitless futures radiate in all directions from the spot where it is parked, extending to futures unknown of terror and excitement.

This morning I stepped out onto the balcony. The bike is gone.