One morning in late 2010 I looked out my Pittsburgh apartment window where I always saw a parking lot, the Spinning Plates Artist Lofts, and a euonymus-lined part of the avenue, there at the beginning of Friendship.
I knew all the families living on the block because of the rescue dog I live with—we would walk around, routinely meet the people.
That early morning and only that morning, I saw out the window a figure of what seemed to be a like four- or five-year-old brown girl riding a bicycle up Friendship Avenue then fade away.
How else I know I saw a ghost is the child seemed so composed, happy, and it was way too early in the morning for someone so young to be out riding alone.
Copyright © 2024 by Soham Patel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 30, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.