girl on the bus

    Open sewage and cigarettes.

    She stinks of smoke, stalks down the aisle and slides into her seat like a cat. She is dressed in contradictions; thick-soled pink leopard loafers covered in spikes juxtaposes against chestnut brown ballet bun. Her posture argues with her pea-buttoned coat and straight-legged blue jeans; she perches on the edge of her seat, back curved and legs crossed straight out in front of her. She forms a literal question mark. Que pasa? (I wonder if the spikes on her shoes dig into her ankles like that.)


    The smell of menthol cigarettes wafts off of her in waves, an invisible cloud that dissipates into the air with every breath--Virginia Slims, maybe? They would suit her. Tiny hands grasping a long, bright blue cylinder. Hands that slide out of her pocket, tracing circles on an ipod classic. Round-round-round-click. An unknown song makes it's way out of the spinning hard drive, makes it's way through brightly soldered joints, up through the audio jack, and snakes it's up way through cherry red earbud cord. Catch and release says brain to ear.
   
    She looks out the window. Big, brown eyes hung with heavy lashes, framed with half-caramel skin. Indian blood. Her eyes are like orbs, they're so large. Avoid eye contact. I'm sitting here writing in my most illegible writing in the hopes that in a casual glance she can't possibly distinguish "she" from the page and thus will not come to the conclusion that I'm writing about her; that I am elevating her from random human being to writing practice to public transit crush.
   
    Girl gets up, leaves as arrogantly as she came. I crane my neck at the window more ostentatiously than I'd like, a rapidly shrinking black figure in the distance. The bus has long since passed the source of the sewage smell, but menthol smoke lingers in the aisle.

Inhale, exhale.