The plump, elderly woman beside me
sleeps with chin to her distended chest.
She rouses from a road bump,
spots me reading a book of poems,
and assumes me to be educated.
She asks me to help her spell “shepherd”
for the bible verse she’s looking up on her smartphone.
After three tries, we finally get it right,
and with the fine letters of the good word
arranged properly once again,
she’s back to letting herself
be herded by the good lord.
We make a brief stop
to exchange westward passengers.
A man squatting on the bench
flicks his half-smoked cigarette at me,
the orange butt kicking my shoe
instead of searing my aimed-for shin.
I refrain from questioning,
having learned from hands both first and second
of the baggage we all carry—
that his might be loaded
with something I don’t know how to unpack.
The bus rarely undergoes a shortage of characters,
but if it can take almost any with reservation
and all without judgment,
then who am I to do any different.
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