The Green Bike

It stands propped against a wall in my memory, that green two wheeler bike, my first, bought second hand from a neighbor. A deep, gravel graze I got from learning to ride it, I swear, still pains a phantom nerve in my now arthritic knee after all these years. How I loved that bike, its dented frame wearing layers of paint pitted by history, its last coat was a thick glaze of leftover house paint the same green color used as trim on window frames and fences fashionable back then. To me it was a gem. I rode it to the boundaries of my world carried on the smooth ride and hum of its tyres, sank its rims deep into the muddy riverbank and raced around a track that skirted the football ground. That bike was pure freedom for me. One day someone took it and left it hooked on a tree in the local park. The top bar of its frame had been snapped clean through. Beneath the layers of paint, rust had eaten away its metal core. In tears I wheeled it home and put it in the shed and closed the door. It was like closing a book on part of my life.