That had been my life for the last few weeks: looking at the list of favorite contacts in my phone, now only two names instead of three; seeing the smudges of Blu Tack on the wall where photos of us had been; touching the place in my bedside drawer where I used to keep his letters.

But the Triumph Bonneville had been the most acute reminder. I hadn’t ridden it since things ended with my partner. Every time I passed it parked on the street, the engine accumulating yellow leaves, I would think of our glorious summer together, riding 5,500 miles across the country on two Triumphs.

After a year of hard work, never-long-enough visits and long-distance phone calls from opposite coasts, we decided to go on an adventure together. We took the long way: five weeks, 15 states and a slice of Canada. I thought it would be the first of many exploits, but a few months later it turned out to be the last.

When I started riding seven years ago, at 21, motorcycles meant autonomy. And when I found a partner to ride with, they began to hold the additional promise of kinship and collaboration. But after he and I broke up, I avoided walking past the Bonneville, going out of my way to not see it sitting there, looking back at me with its blank headlamp.

Eventually, I had to move the bike to make way for the leaf sweepers, and that was the day I realized someone had ripped away a piece of wiring and stolen a spark plug cap. As much as I wanted to continue ignoring it, the motorcycle had to go somewhere, so I had it towed to this shop. A few days later, a friend dropped me off so I could ride it home.