I.
The bus exhales at the station
And thirty strangers climb inside,
carrying their mornings
like bruises beneath their coats.
Someone smells of rain.
Someone is eating an apple.
Someone is already angry.
II.
I stand between two shoulders
And a window full of advertisements,
watching the city smear itself
across the glass.
My coffee is warm in my hand
Until the bus turns hard –
Then the lid disappears.
III.
I look down.
People look up.
A shoe steps beside my cup.
Someone says sorry
Without looking at me.
The doors open
And the whole bus becomes a throat,
swallowing another hundred bodies.
IV.
At the crossing,
everyone moves at once.
Phones glow like tiny exits.
Headphones seal people
Inside their own private weather.
A woman laughs too loudly.
A child screams.
A siren cuts through everything
And nobody stops.
V.
I find the lid underneath a seat
Three stops later.
It has been stepped on,
creased into something almost useless.
I put it back on anyway
And hold the cup against my chest
As the crowd carries me forward –
Not knowing where everyone is going,
only knowing
I am in the way.