This bike someone liked.
For years I’ve been riding this trail that gently snakes along beside the Wolastoq River – it’s wide and covered in crusher dust, canopied and well traveled. When I first saw this bike locked to a tree at a cross roads I just thought someone had stashed it there, but it’s been way too long; now the chain is rusted mud brown, leaves of fall past fill the coffee mug holder and the paint has begun to chip and flake like the paper bark of an aging birch tree. The weeds grow through its frame. I, like this bike, await its owner to return from whatever battle, or wait for a tree to sprout under it and carry it toward the heavens. Someone once loved this bike.