This Stop

I've been standing here for twenty-three years. This sounds like a
long time, or would have done, but with the benefit of a perspective
acquired from such a wait, time is not an issue. My history teacher
used to explain that our lives on this planet are equivalent to the
last three words of the last book in our school library- and I know her
to be right.
I enjoy remembering my first half an hour at this stop. There was the
queue of people jostling for places, bumping in to each other,
apologising, laughing- and apologising again. Children ran in and out
of the legs of their parents, knocking over plastic shopping bags and
umbrellas. As time wore on and no bus arrived I began to hear the tuts
and the what's the government doing about transports emitted from
indignant mouths. One man kept looking at his wristwatch; his head
nodding up and down like a courting flamingo. Next to me, behind the
AdShel, a young couple stood quietly hand-in-hand; the girl had a
suitcase.

Then as the bus pulled towards us, after that pleasant half hour, came
a wind. A scorching wind. It smashed into us, searing our skins,
stripping our hair. Trees were uprooted, windows blasted in, and
screams were torn from their source into the ferocious air.

And I remained.

For a long time after there was a comfortable silence, the only other
presence being the charred figures of the young couple. They were
slumped with their backs against the shelter. I was still standing. I
consider them my friends now though I have no real way of knowing if
this friendship is reciprocated.

After several years the natural world began to return. I remember with
affection the skinny, stray dogs that would urinate on my faded red
heels and trousers that have since rotted from my limbs. I remember the
acrid, tangy smell that would rise as a vapour from their puddles on a
cold morning.
Now, the plants have come to reclaim what was theirs. They push through
the Tar Macadam between my toes and embrace my legs and torso. They
push under my knotted skin creating a new network of veins, arteries
and capillaries. Flowers open within the sockets of my eyes and bees
come to collect the pollen contained within their stamen.
Down the road only metres away rests the upturned hulk of the delayed
number thirty-six. One day it will come, but I can wait.