Blue sky. Pink balloons.
Cotton candy spinning towards the hands of children.
Mother gave her the bicycle on the girl’s seventh birthday.
It was pink, of course, with shiny metal spokes.
They took a picture of the bicycle at the birthday party.
It stayed on the mother’s desk for the rest of her life.
Three years later, the bicycle had gotten too small for the girl.
The mother put the old thing in the basement
and bought the girl a new one.
It was blue this time, of course.
She couldn’t be seen with something pink.
Five years after that, the girl turned fifteen.
She was in high school now.
She hadn’t touched a bicycle in years now. It was too uncool.
The mother dragged the second bicycle into the basement
next to the old pink one.

Three years after that, the girl is packing for college. The mother has given her old bicycles away to a family friend. She often looks at the photo on her desk as a reminder of what life once was.

Or what it could be.