Vignette City 37.

*** ‘Vignette City’ is an ongoing project of daily writing and urban photography ***

Waiting at the bus stop. 

I notice the construction of the bus stop.

The bus stop is only a clear back wall with a clear roof and it is raining and the roof keeps the rain off of me.

The bus stop is constructed of steel and the glass is not glass, it is three layers of clear plastic.

Who designs bus stops? Civil engineers are likely the designers of bus stops, though I do not know what civil engineers actually do, but they probably design bus stops. And awnings. The roof of the bus stop, see-thru and sheltering me from the rain, is really just a plastic awning and pretends to be nothing else.

There is no map at the bus stop. All of us who huddle here in this bus stop know where we came from and where we need to go. So there is no need for a map. This is not a bus stop for tourists. 

Even the ants are locals. There are two ants. I see them crawling up one of the steel posts that form the back of the bus stop. I see them and they seem to be on their way to other places. Other places like the other places that each of us here will be ultimately head to once the bus arrives and we leave this bus stop.

There are things carved into the silver steel post that the ants are climbing up. Not always words. Sometimes just letters. The letters I and the letters L and U and V and the word MARCUS, which I think is a name, but it is not my name, so this is probably not a message for me, unless I wants me to know that s/he loves MARCUS.

I wonder what MARCUS is like. All I know about him is that he is lovable. Lovable in that way that would make I want to declare that love with a dull blade of flat edge into steel. How long must I have spent cutting that message? Carving it? I do not know who I was or is, but s/he must have had a lot of time or a lot of energy. 

Love probably gives a person a lot of energy and/or the sense that time has grown long, that it has gotten so long that dying is a thing that won’t happen. It will though and I want to say that to the ants that are trying to maneuver around droplets of rainwater that are leaking down through the joint at the top of the bus stop where the steel meets the plastic of the awning.

The bus stop is leaking. I hope it does not leak too much before the bus arrives, because I do not want the bus stop to stop being a bus stop. I like this bus stop. I do not want it to become non-functional. I do not want it to become debris, at least not while I need it.

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