The Empty Seat on the Bench
You sit.
You sit on a bench by McKinley’s Market on a road I’ve ridden down many times before.
You sit as if you think you are invisible to the world around you,
fumbling with keys to a car you probably parked underneath one of the flickering street lamps.
The cool metal collides with your fingers as you breathe out a sigh into the winter air.
I can see your breath from where I sit in this quaint old café.
You look at it as well, staring at the little bits of moisture inches from your face.
They slowly fade away and your gaze travels from the air to your shoes.
They’re brown, and you seem mesmerized by them as you scrape their soles against the rocky pavement.
Your foot lingers on each stone of the sidewalk, as if the sensation of one beneath your feet is entirely different from that of another.
With furrowed eyebrows, you look up, confused, and it seems you’ve lost all knowledge of what you’re doing and why.
You’ve uncovered some hidden secret of thought, and your mind wanders from this confusion into a different world, separate from the one you’ve experienced on this small green bench.
Your eyes focus in on some insignificant point in space; your face remains pensive as your muscles tense.
Then, as if to purposely interrupt your thoughts, thoughts I can only wish to hear, a siren sounds a few blocks away.
You look up, shake your head, and relax the muscles you’d clenched in your exploration of thought.
Placing your hands on the bench, you push yourself from the place you sit, run a hand through
your hair, and walk away.
Years go by, and I ride down the road again.
You sit on the empty seat of the bench you’d so long ago left in your tracks.
You sit with your mind wrapped in a thought you’re having some place far away.
The cold does not bother you now as it had not before.
I can only dream of what you’re thinking as your fumble with keys to a different car that you
likely parked under a different streetlight.
I watch from the frosted window of my own car now, but in the still image I’ve preserved in my
mind it’s as if nothing has changed.
It’s as if you’d never disappeared at all.
You sit on a bench by McKinley’s Market on a road I’ve ridden down many times before.
You sit as if you think you are invisible to the world around you,
fumbling with keys to a car you probably parked underneath one of the flickering street lamps.
The cool metal collides with your fingers as you breathe out a sigh into the winter air.
I can see your breath from where I sit in this quaint old café.
You look at it as well, staring at the little bits of moisture inches from your face.
They slowly fade away and your gaze travels from the air to your shoes.
They’re brown, and you seem mesmerized by them as you scrape their soles against the rocky pavement.
Your foot lingers on each stone of the sidewalk, as if the sensation of one beneath your feet is entirely different from that of another.
With furrowed eyebrows, you look up, confused, and it seems you’ve lost all knowledge of what you’re doing and why.
You’ve uncovered some hidden secret of thought, and your mind wanders from this confusion into a different world, separate from the one you’ve experienced on this small green bench.
Your eyes focus in on some insignificant point in space; your face remains pensive as your muscles tense.
Then, as if to purposely interrupt your thoughts, thoughts I can only wish to hear, a siren sounds a few blocks away.
You look up, shake your head, and relax the muscles you’d clenched in your exploration of thought.
Placing your hands on the bench, you push yourself from the place you sit, run a hand through
your hair, and walk away.
Years go by, and I ride down the road again.
You sit on the empty seat of the bench you’d so long ago left in your tracks.
You sit with your mind wrapped in a thought you’re having some place far away.
The cold does not bother you now as it had not before.
I can only dream of what you’re thinking as your fumble with keys to a different car that you
likely parked under a different streetlight.
I watch from the frosted window of my own car now, but in the still image I’ve preserved in my
mind it’s as if nothing has changed.
It’s as if you’d never disappeared at all.