Finding myself on the bus, I stand up -- and not two seats in front of me I catch a glimpse of the back of a head. Thin gray cotton curls, wrinkled neck, a familiar bracelet dangling from the wrist.
Just as I begin to pass, she takes hold of my hand. This is a warmth I know, only slightly colder. She turns and says my name with long, stretched out syllables, voice box shattering with vibration. Dead for 20 winters on the crosstown bus, she says, "They wouldn't let me off. My hands are too rough for them, too old. My hip's broken. I worked too hard, they said."
My hand's on her cheek and I feel tangled in a network of networking webs, spanning timezones, worlds, imperceptible planes.
"Next time I see you, I'll make some coffee," she says. "How's your mother?"
I say my mother is fine, but I don't bother to ask how it would be possible for her to make coffee.
Later that day, after the first bombs explode over the river, my body expands and is long and thin in the alley between two buildings. I climb, scale, float to the top, naked but trailed by a clean brown blanket that wants nothing more than to cover me.
On the roof, I look for the time, but I have never owned a watch. I suddenly know this as a small bone in my wrist begins to pull away from me. I watch as it stretches in the skin, hairs dancing on ends. The small bone dislocates and frees itself from from the joint, from the skin, and drifts into a dark green sky.
