The Bench

The bench was unimportant to itself, really, it was the people who passed over that mattered. A rosy cheeked daughter clutching a purple balloon in her left hand and gripping a chocolate ice cream cone in her right, grinning up at her father to make sure she has him, too. A homeless man with a frayed beard sleeping with a fake newspaper from August 15, 1945 over his face. A gangster with pants three sizes two big and boxers three times too bright sitting quietly, looking lost as he watches the city jostle and spin. The bench loved all its people, even the ones who stuck gray gum under its corners, and even the pigeons who pecked at the crumbs left on its lap and left lumpy white smears behind. But that, after all, was the way of the bench.