The city bus smells like your best friend's house. Specifically that time you made Indian wontons, deep fried, filled with a rich feta cheese and crumbled vegetarian meat patties. You both ate too many; every time you burped for at least a week it tasted like stale grease.
The scent vanishes. You look at the ceiling. It's a pale off-white, smattered with gum. How did someone get gum on the ceiling? You look around and realize there is gum everywhere you could imagine: the windows, the doors, the undersides of the seat, and, for the unfortunate rider, the actual fabric covering. Pink, purple and green mostly, with the occasional blue and a white that blends into the color of the area surrounding the windows. You pull out a piece of Wintergreen from your bag; the pale green is so different from the vibrant color of the residue.
The bus turns. Now the odor is a dead skunk, a putrid smell that makes you cover your mouth and cough. You glance out the window to see if you can see the animal. He is nowhere to be found. He must have died tucked away from your view in the forest. You hope his death was painless, unlike the stabbing in your back from the carpeted seats. You turn, trying to relieve some pressure.
Instead knives are in your back, reminding you of the many times you split your arm open with the "safety razor" picked out of a pink ladies shaver. The blood felt warm on your fingertips as it dripped into the shower, and then it felt cold as you began to lose consciousness.
You hold your arm, curious if anyone on the bus had seen the dark purple scars. The only woman ever remotely close is absorbed in a battered copy of the second Harry Potter book.
Another woman in the back can be heard spouting Ebonics. "He ain't no good for you. You deserve better." You ponder this. Better, what is better? You too deserve better, not being rushed to the hospital in a cramped car to get an emergency blood transfusion after filling the bathtub. The room was too small, your gown was assless, but most importantly it was sleeveless. Doctors were staring and stitching up your arms; your personal space was being invaded. Similar to how your space is being invaded right now, as a homeless man with red hair and a toothless smile, having just boarded the bus, is leaning in a bit too close to your chest.
The breaks pop. The overhead system dings to signal someone handicap leaving the bus, sounding like the heart monitor when you were so sure you had bleed to death. The beeps slow and rhythmical. Unfortunately, you lived.
You slump into a seat, glancing around wide eyed, sure that someone has seen your cuts. The bus changes momentum, you catch a whiff of your best friend's house again, and ache for home.
