Endless

Image credit: AphoticSketch (https://www.deviantart.com/aphoticsketch/art/Abstract-Bus-Journey-294217495)

A journey. A start and an end. A forever long straight ride, complete without direction.

One day I will step onto a bus, a bus without driver or steering wheel, and I would sit in the far corner, perhaps by a stranger with deadlocks and pink tinted eyebrows. I wouldn’t look at her and she would ignore me, and together we would look out of our windows, as far from each other as can be. A thread would join us in this limitless individuality, and I know she would smile even as I fought a maddening urge to grin.

Outside the windows, the streets would fly by. Lamps and trees, men with dogs and women in heels. Children rushing down the cobbled paths with their hands raised over their heads, loud laughter issuing from lungs that always seem too small until they explode into action. Stray dogs chasing cats chasing mice. A fast forward film passing, and me and her silent audience enraptured.

Without looking I would know about the other passengers of this strange bus, brave souls finally having fought free. A mother weighted down by the burden of too many kids and too little time; a father haggard with loneliness and hollow with the need to see his family; a son long estranged, wanting to ask for forgiveness but too far gone; a daughter already forgetting the faces of those that once were closer than skin. They are all here with me, lost hearts searching for meaning, and we all travel in this bus that does not stop.

We’ll see fields of green and brown outside the windows soon, a sparkle of bright blue water here and a blush of waving pink tulips there. Perhaps the bus would slow and threads of melody would wind its way through the half open windows. My heart would jump and I would look at her.

That strange face, unrecognized and unrecognizable. A bruised cheek and swollen lips, eyes hollow, skin pale. Yet she would smile and I would smile back, and we would scoot toward each other, awkward as we chose which window to move toward.

Finally, I would let her pull me toward the one she sat beside, and I would grasp a stranger’s hand, lean on a foreign shoulder, and look out at what she saw. Her world. A lopsided, distinct view to what I’d left behind.

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