Passing Through.

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.