Impecunious

Charred butts of cigarettes are brushed into a dirty pile under the edges of the lone bench. Its cold metal ceases to soften nor warm under body weight. Loosely-bound fibreglass sheets create a doorless shelter. Transparent, aquarium-like with a maximum capacity of one. A sign stands dripping and lanky like a large lollipop. Stop 114c. The schedule lazily framed below, long faded and peeled, no help to the one who failed to remember the routes. The traffic light on the nearby corner provides rhythmic, technicolor filters to the unsaturated evening. Long green, brief yellow, short red.

Unnamed bodies linger around the swaying shelter, face down in a coat collar or digging through a wallet. Warm breaths appear like empty speech bubbles. Drops run wearily down the green-filtered panels. The skew of moisture and motion like a film on fast forward. Red traffic lights periodically pause the colors, revealing them to be vehicles. All of which contain unfamiliar faces, but one, who fails to wave before it is urged on by a green hue.

Charred butts sail like boats on a calm lake in a collection of rain water below the bench. The corpse of a beetle leads the fleet. The small pond tinted red.

Then a stiffening of muscles. A contagious energy falls among the visitors of 114c like dominos. Grinding bellows of a large machine alert the grand arrival. Choreographed faces resurface from their jacket burrows to squint uniformly through green mist at the scrolling number above the oncoming windsheild. The red ox groans to a halt, accordian doors open for only a warm burst of air to disembark and stir the beetle fleet. Release of a pressurized air then welcomes entrance onto the lowered step of the vehicle. An awkward, hesitant order is formed between silent, eager eyes before the filing onto the bus. Rain-soaked boots disappear two by two through the threshold of the lit staircase. The reddish eyes of the driver stall a moment before the level is pulled to seal the bus.

And in red light it waits. Temptingly. Mockingly. Sickeningly. With its passengers’ red eyes turned towards you in your cigarette-filled aquarium. Then at last green, like a vacuum pulls the bus onwards until the unblinking tail lights finally turn as well.