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Kidnapping. When in high school and taking naked photographs her boyfriend, Mercy thinks that it couldn't possibly get any worse, there's nothing worse than this. An abandoned bicycle. Spokes like eyetooth, plucked and rising like a cupcake. We are at the lake house, looking out of the wall of window, one big picture. I can see sailboats, but they are not there, it is winter. In my mind, Mercy thinks, I have taken a picture of every season out of this picture window, when the dogwood is in bloom, when it is shedding its paper skin, how we would write notes back and forth with pencil, bury them in the backyard. I remember you saying to me, remember when we are 20, we will come back and unbury these, this is our pact. Now you are dead and I am 20. I am even older than that. You are still very much dead.

Kidnapping. When the wheel's spokes are rotted out, how they no longer fit in gum like candy or root of mouth. Those photographs from when she was young. How she remembers what it felt like to be naked that day, on cool sheets, the weight. An abandoned bicycle. At the lake house, how high are the waves, the liferings are gone. The shadow in the bottom of the lake on the sand, the water so clear.
What horizon looks like, what do you think of it. An abandoned bicycle, how rust is and will be, like a cockroach or trilobite, ancient. I am 20 but I am older than 20, I am almost dead, but you are dead and at least we all know exactly where you are.

Kidnapping. Post-milk carton, pre-John Walsh and Code Adam and Amber Alert. An abandoned bicycle. The day we went miles and miles on bikes with people from church and I had a flat tire half way through and ruined the afternoon and cried and cried and all I remember really is the crying and wondering what would happen if everyone left me there to cry and die by myself on the cement of the 20 mile bike trail. These good kindly godly people leaving a child to die in the heat. Would someone have adopted me in the desolate little sidetown we were in front of? As an adult going back there, almost all the businesses are closed. I would have died in that town.

Kidnapping. We are at a resturant and we watch the skateboarders outside get harrassed by the owner. Does anyone ever think of me where I am from. An Abandoned bicycle, a calvary of abandoned bicycles all strolling along the bike trail with flat tires and hopeful riders. As an adult I ride the trail and my tires survive. I ride the trail to the town and back and I think about you the whole time.
I think about us and if things could have been different or not. Mercy knows probably not.