Tangent - Written October 19th, 2008

I rode the bus down a road of tragedy. The window illustrated yellow stones and putrid weather – smog clouding beautiful pictures that deserved to be framed.


Conscious thought was left with the driver. His hat was warm. It was not winter, yet his hat was warm.


He waves an arm. He takes fare. He stares forever out the windshield, eyes covered eerily and guarded by dark glasses. He smiles grimly when we pause at stops; intervals; breaks. There are no traffic lights. There is no red light for tragedy.


I no longer have to think. I smile. I wait. I pretend that the roads of my childhood are not strewn near seeping swells and sewers. The exterior that is littered with crashing photographs and the interior lined with faux leather seats. These pictures won’t last forever; the memory will leave. The bus driver knows this. His mother is senile.


Hidden between unconscious laughter is adolescence. Aching ribs. The structure of your heart framed so wildly; vividly. Protected. Destroyed when the sidewalk curves and meets disaster.


Feel me here. My very presence beneath the white cotton of your sleeves where your heart resides. Pumping; breathing; dissipating. The colour of your breath a fiery mixture, ignited by the condensed fog that leaves your lips.


Cold air. It is not winter, yet your breath is cold.


Pebbles clatter beneath sturdy wheels. Faint and weak, they sympathise as a symphony. Youth flourishes. Dances to the allocating song. Twirling amid the pleasures of young adulthood, you lose your innocence. The bus driver can see this when you wrap your arms around yourself. His mother is senile, and he too will be senile; but for the moment he is not.


The ribs that jostled in laughter ache for different reasons. Pumping steadily, your heart careens. The protection offered vigorously to your vessels before is glass. You realise this and the shattered segments pierce you.


An ambulance passes. The sirens lull you to sleep.


Adulthood feels different. I am sure of myself. The road spirals and we turn in a wave of spheres. Outside the window there is a rush. A lawnmower is abandoned, only half the grass is cut. A flower caught in bloom diminishes without unfurling.


My stop is the next one. I am that flower. I don’t pull the chain. The bus driver continues on and I see another world pass me by. The window encloses freedom. I start to unfurl.


Before we reach the next stop, there is impact. A crash. The way things were meant to happen. I mildly think to myself... if I had just gotten off at my own stop.


The laughing child’s ribs are fractured.


The broken hearted youth dies of heart failure.


The bus driver has amnesia.


The road to tragedy is complete.


...Myself? I was never alive.