I came in over the pond, still carrying the wet green smell of it, and there it was, the long wooden thing the humans set down and then walk away from and it stays. That is the part I keep failing to understand. It stays. Slats worn pale where they sit, a little brass square screwed into the top with a name I lifted the dust off of and could not read fast enough before I was past it.
An old one sits at the end. I got under the brim of his hat, ruffled the thin hair there, tugged the loose corner of the newspaper he pretends to read. He puts one hand flat on the wood beside him. On the empty part. On the part where no one is. Presses down like he is keeping something there.
I would have taken it, whatever it is, I take everything, I took the crumbs off his knee and the smell of somebody else's coffee three streets over and a single feather and set them all down further along without meaning to. But you cannot lift a hand pressed to a warm slat. You cannot carry the weight of a person choosing to remain in one place because a place once held another person.
I lifted the newspaper instead, right out from under him, and he grabbed at it and laughed a little, alone, and I was already at the water, already gone, carrying his laugh out over the pond to nobody, and I have set it down somewhere by now and forgotten which bench it belonged to.