The fluorescent glow of the lighting flickers once. Maybe twice. 

The city bus drives for centuries and seconds in a heartbeat, mocking time. Neon signs of the nightclubs you pass flow into an oil spill on the rain soaked windows. The woman next to you is crying.

Like the rain. 

She lost her father. Or maybe her brother. You’re pretty sure it was war or cancer, but all the stories sound the same now. The common thread of suffering connects them like the powerlines you whiz by. She cries out ‘why?’, but you remain as silent as the dead. Answers don’t mean much in grief. She’ll call you an apathetic god upon her departure. The smell of cigarettes and broken promises will linger, but her eyes will bear hope. Hope is another thread. It connects them too.

Souls can get lost on city buses, between one stop and another. They have nameless, haunted faces, but you’ve learned to listen to their page of humanity. With the spine of their collective novel bound in complicated paradoxes of pain and forgiveness, they’ll beg teary eyed for a gentle epilogue. They’ll get off at the next stop. You just have to listen.