My Right Foot

I was simply stepping. And as it turns out it is a good thing the step was simple, and not robust or firm. It was a light step, around the rear of a big truck and the road biker heading the wrong way up the busy street that struck my right foot flew over the handlebars in slow motion. The papers I had fervently printed and neatly stacked flew across the roadway as well, the light catching their angles, a tire mark left on my sign-in sheet. The board, a key organizing tool, was upended as was I as I flew to the ground on my right side, but bounced back up in shock by the time he had hit the ground. I am gathering the papers along with my driving companion and the biker. He is apologizing I am trying to piece the impact together. Just a bit stiff in the right ankle, but for most of the afternoon numb. You'll have to excuse me, I explain to the crowd gathered, I was just hit by a bike, and I don't quite feel myself, but within instances the adrenaline took care of that, then just a dull pulsing ache for a day and now, not much but a tweak. We have seen each other twice. Yesterday in the produce section, I was holding some vegetable and chatting and he walked up and just stood. "Oh you are the guy who hit me on the bike" I say laughing. His earnest apologies are so genuine. I am also relieved he was not more hurt, we share the moment of what could have happened had there been traffic, had my step been grander. He is worried a bit about my body, I am worried about his. Again today, we see each other. "How are you feeling?" he asks. "Really,I'm fine. Its nothing." I say smiling as broadly as I can to assure him. Funny a step with the right foot, and an unusual choice of direction, a coincidence of timing, forever mapped in memory, partially put on the body, and a shared marker of experience by sheer accident.