Bus# 44

I can feel the hunger. It grips my stomach like an anxious child. I ignore it. I have money for food, but despite the gnawing I do not want it now. I sway with the bus as it winds through the streets. The rain batters the windows. Huge rich drops are eager to join their brothers, already settled into a cool dampness on my neck. My scarf holds them and fosters the kind of discomfort I can only be grateful for as a distraction. I love the rain. I will always wonder about those who don’t, like people who do not love small animals or music. I can’t imagine where they keep their humanity if not in constant wonder at the world falling around them. Pleasure for me is everywhere, but in small, fleeting portions. Too much effort or deliberation causes the moment to shudder and disintegrate. A fragile concept when it is acknowledged, I do not seek to hold any joy longer. I pick it up when it smiles at me, and then put it down when it begins to struggle fitfully. The immense happiness that comes to me seems perverted at times, telling me “treasure this place, this moment, this thought.” I can feel the urge to press it firmly against my heart until it is crisp and dry. The moment can never be saved; but to know that it was, and that there will be another, is a great comfort when the darkness comes. I do not like the darkness. I fight it. It hangs on me as if every small piece of my flesh is weighted with its own private concerns. They do not want or need my help. They do not need me at all. I sometimes think that my own flesh will abandon me from a disgust at the thoughts I entertain. My skin and my hair and my nails all turn from me in disdain. My wrists cramp and my fingers shrivel with resentment at being forced to commit these creatures, in a semblance of permanence, to paper. Also, from too much water because, as I mentioned before, it is raining and I am wet. There is a man sitting a ways from me. I noticed him when he mounted the bus because he resembled a friend I have not seen in a long time. When I was sure that I did not know him, I turned away without even a smile to acknowledge that we both know I was staring. Now when I glance in his direction his gaze tracks mine and when our eyes connect his eyebrows shift, ever slightly, and he squints, wondering why I am looking at him. I nurse the awkwardness like a treasured bruise and wonder if he is doing the same. People start to shuffle and rise. There is a moment when the airplane lands and everybody scrambles to gather their belongings and to stand in one another’s way for too long. They hurry to their destinations, too quickly for courtesy and stumble a little with the novelty of free movement. This moment is repeated modestly any time people disembark from a crowded public bus. I stay in my seat to avoid the crush, and to avoid any movement that might cause my cold, damp jacket to press against me with more determination. The bus is almost empty now and I too thank the driver and step out of the foggy pillbox, into the rain.