I’d trace a finger on the windows and focus on the fragmented lights of oncoming headlights as the lonesome chatter of the ill at ease inhabited the cabin of the bus. There was a grace in that co-opted ambivalence. I squiggled crude drawings into fog I breathed onto the glass while unhappy parents fled to their third shift jobs at grocery stores and taxi companies and hospitals. They had no truth or absolution. They had bent wills and bill payments that prevented their bank accounts from growing. I had none of that. I had lassitude. I had empty pockets of time. I was unknown, unidentified, and so could seep through the contents of their character and rifle their pockets while trying to decipher the linguistic tendencies of the Spanish they sometimes spoke with a discernible fury. So I turned outward and this is what I saw.
by Hank Cherry
