confessional

i step on board the midafternoon bus heading downtown, packed in spite of the warmth that my skin distrusts, i grab a gray vinyl strap and hang on, staring out the window as we cross the river, struck dumb by the brilliant blue sky. the bus is rowdy. it's an entirely different crowd that rides in the afternoon compared to the morning commute that's so much more solemn than any catholic mass i was forced as a child to kneel for. it's like we're tranquilized animals caught in the wild, being shipped to the zoo, barely conscious and grim, as if heading into a battle we are certain to lose. there's something about a bus that can make you feel like a prisoner stuck in a cell with a loquacious inmate, infected with conversations that you have no choice but to follow and attempt to make sense of. i look down at the loud, fake old lady with the tammy faye aqua eyeshadow and the dyed, shoepolish black hair (i was in the army once, when i was young, and i can't help but think of shoepolish and buffing boots until they smile  whenever i see someone with dyed black hair) and her clanking neon bracelets coiling up the jiggling flesh of her bare arm as she recites the lyrics to madonna's lucky star for the dumpling in sweatpants sitting next to her, who just told her and us, that her daughter is addicted to meth again and won't call her or share her latest number. she tells the whole story in a dull, flat butter knife monotone, only her moist eyes revealing the grief, like a beautiful car sparkling in a drab dump of a showroom, both of them pure as a mountain stream, weeping as we enter the impersonal city, weeping while i hang there from a gray vinyl strap.