The glove on the fence

Someone has set a lost glove on the iron fence outside the laundromat on Westminster Street, pushed down over one spike so the fingers point at the sky. It is a man's glove, brown leather gone pale at the thumb, and it has been there since Monday.

I pass it twice a day. Each time it looks less like a thing that was dropped and more like a thing that is waiting, the way a coat left on a chair tells the room someone will be back. Nobody has taken it. Nobody has thrown it away either, which in this city counts as a kind of agreement.

This morning the rain filled the palm and I did not empty it. It is not my glove.