Here's a thing.

Port Authority bus terminal: the land of perpetual twilight,
because, waiting at the gate, it always looks dark.
The garage through the window looks like an empty summer night,
and the lamps from the ceiling give an impression of lonely highway lights,
gleaming on a strip of forgotten road.
It feels right for a place of coming and going.
Riding the bus is so soothing,
because there is nothing for me to do except watch the scenery blur into familiarity,
city grayness to highway steel to suburban green.
Funny, I never thought I could like this place.
But the feeling in my stomach is not unpleasant.
I am happy to be back home,
where nothing happens, and there is nothing to do, and nowhere to go,
and people are obnoxious and small, sometimes.
But I am happy.
I leave the bus, my coat is not needed, the air tastes mellow and new.
Maybe it is the feeling of not fully belonging,
of being a stranger in a strange land that is appealing.
Knowing that no one knows I am here makes me free, makes me giddy.
It is like being invisible, and nothing ties me down,
and I feel like I want to walk and walk forever along a sleepy suburban avenue
that feels like spring and old familiar things, anonymous and secret.
I pass a few men outside a pub on my way,
they are already there at two in the afternoon.
I feel a little down, but I am okay.
Down the hill, past house of old friend, where I would walk to every day in summer.
Down the driveway with no cars in it to my house.
Up the ladder, which is kept there for me, to sit on my roof,
my favorite place to be,
and I wait for my parents to come home.


edit: dang it all, stupid blog format breaks up my carefully spaced thing! I spent a long time doing that! Grrr.