Someone stole my bike from the hall. I noticed it today when I was taking out the trash, tossing the plastic bag on top of the heap that's become a rat nest due to our landlord's negligence.

I feel violated. I know it wasn't my body, I know there was no forced entry into my home. I just feel wronged and I want to say I don't know why someone would do this, but I know that would be naive.

I also know that I haven't ridden that bike since January 2013, since I got my subway card, and if I had really, actually, really cared I would have locked it to something. Another bike, or at least ran the U-lock through the spokes. It feels like my fault.

My father gave me that bike. I started chalking it up as just a moderate loss, then I remembered everything I've done with that bike, the places it's gone, how long it's been a part of my life.

I remember riding with Joe through Marblehead in the summer, a thread between him and I. Back and forth to work at the cafe, down the Rail Trail in the Berkshires, weaving through traffic and red lights on Flatbush Ave.

Falling on the support bar, tearing my insides, bashing my shins. The back wheel coming dislodged going twenty miles an hour past the Prospect Park Zoo.

Tipping over on a dark summer night in Swampscott while weaving and wobbling down the road, one hand on the bars, the other holding my flip phone while I talked to K about her night. She heard a thud and then me laughing in a heap on the sidewalk.

I remember the day after high school graduation, when all my friends were still in school and I had nothing to do but ride. I took it as far I could go into Nahant to the reserve and sat and looked at the ocean by myself. I did that over and over again that summer.

I start to delude myself into thinking that writing this and finally appreciating it will make it come back to me. Like this problem will solve itself, it hasn't slipped away into the quicksand that is this callous city.

I should have taken better care of it.