SINGING IN THE BUS

SINGING IN THE BUS

We sang in the bus on the way home in the dark because we were frightened. But I could not quite remember 'of what' for when I dared to look the shadows on the bus walls were muted and welcoming with borders like the soft fluid edges of warm treacle, and the lights from the windows of the houses that we passed smelled of fresh baked bread and steaming soup and people loving out loud; and the stars, when I glanced up, looked like a beautiful mess of fireflies who had set out on a wild voyage without a map.

Someone told me once of certain thieves who would collect fireflies in jars as a means of finding their illicit way to keyholes. The thought made my mind dance and I fancied enchanted thieves dressed in veiled purples whose errands included only the pilfering of the most charming of objects: secret diaries with gilded keys and bound with bright pink ribbons, blue speckled eggs and scented pressed flowers and kisses on pillows. I would certainly enjoy that type of thief I imagined. Indeed I believed we would have been friends. And such things I would think as we sang in the bus on the way home in the dark because we were frightened although I could not quite remember 'of what '.

When there was a pause in the singing the older ones told us to clamp our hands over our ears to protect us from things we might hear from others. But rather than clamping my ears harsh and flat I had taught myself to cup my hands gently over my ears as though they were small caves through which the wind fluted the songs of far off lands; as though they were large sea shells ferrying the choruses of oceans like beautiful sirens in search of drifting sailors. Outside sounds became the muffled whispers of an unknown language that lulled like the salt spray echoes of my tiny hollowed hands. And all these things staved off the fear of what I could not quite remember as we sang in the bus on the way home in the dark.

The wheels of the bus finally slowed and we all became quiet, the quiet of breathlessness, the deafening quiet of a broken down refrigerator. Looking out I saw the approaching lights of familiar windows that smelled of neither fresh baked bread nor steaming soup and where any love between people was kept in check and covert; and I saw a door through which enchanted thieves would never, ever dare. And I believed that I could hear, from beneath my bed, the disappointed sighs of blue speckled eggs and fragrant pressed posies and stolen kisses and the trapped ramblings of an ornamented diary.

The brakes of the bus toiled to a slow halt and the doors slapped opened. We were home and I remembered why we were frightened.

(mish 2018)