2,999.12

Yellow cable, stop requested. Everything shakes. The doors sound like opening the jaws of some rusty old beast unburied from the planet’s core. Some depart, some step onboard. The commuters dance for steady footing before the engine lurches and anything loose will rattle. People cling to their seats like spots on a life raft. The brakes squeak. The woman’s voice on the intercom tells you where the next stop is and she sounds like she’s talking you down from a panic attack. We all pretend not the smell the weed or the excessive cologne or the body odor, for fear it might be us, for fear of hurt feelings in tight spaces. Mostly silence. The conversations that do happen, we’re all a part of them whether we want to be or not. The graffiti on the seatbacks shares its answer to life’s biggest question. You wonder how often they clean these surfaces. You contemplate pulling the emergency exit handle on the edge of the nearest window, just to see what happens. Stop requested. Screws are loose. Paint is peeling. The evidence of generations of commuters that took this route before you, trapped in the DNA of the bubblegum wad stuck under your chair. We’re the most united when we make room for the guy in the wheelchair, when we give up our seats for the elderly, when small children drool and smile at us while their mother searches frantically for her bus pass. It’s my stop. I pull the yellow cord.