Bus Stop

She stands on the sidewalk with her back to the big glass windows full of mannequins. I see her almost everyday I come to this stop. She flits around a pile of trash bags stacked three high and four across as pedestrians wait anxiously for their steel chariot to carry them home. The bus numbers 5, 71,72, 73, and 358 stop here to transport people out if this city, eventually stopping somewhere near their homes. The buses take people away from her, away from the despair, away from the sadness, away from the madness that is life in this city.

When you wake up from sleeping on the streets you tend to look more like the streets have slept on you. No, I’ve yet to lay my head to rest on the thin sheet of cardboard separating me from the cement of the sidewalk, I cannot say I speak from experience. But I have seen faces and heard stories that have helped me to understand that a part of your soul is left on that concrete when the early morning comes and you rise up from a bed of cardboard.

So I think to myself, “why at this bus stop, why does she stand here? Did something happen here long ago that brings here comfort?”

The number 5 pulls up to the curb and as I board one thought runs through my head, will her bus ever come?

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Reflections on a steel island.