i am sad on the 438x right now

Question for my mother:

Does everyone notice what I’m doing? Or do I only think so because I notice what they are doing?

Hey you, you’re going the opposite direction I am. It’s 7:34pm on a Friday and your destination is Abbotsford? The bus stop on this side of the street is much warmer but you won’t give it a chance! This is the only place in the world that is safe from tonight's wind. Instead, you fiddle with your broken shoes and the fray of your striped sweater as cars pass faster than you can follow them. 

Where did you go? 

The wrong bus drove past and honked to ask my intentions, I waved him off and you disappeared. I never even saw your bus come. I don’t believe you were even waiting for the bus, you were only placed to protect me in my brief, windy vulnerability and you left once your job was done. But your job was not done! I did not get on that bus, I wouldn’t do that to you. It is slow and there is never anyone interesting to look at and I have to pause the music in my headphones to make sure I’m not breathing too loudly. It takes corners in the complete wrong manner and every stop leaves me in the sun. We pass disjointed, crumbling buildings and winter light jabs between roofs until it finds me again. And then the buildings are left cold and dark, boring each other with old stories of opulence while they crackle in their purgatory on Parramatta Rd – Sydney’s throbbing artery. 

If you’d just waited at the bus stop for five more minutes, my bus would’ve come and you would’ve seen me get on. I could have stared from my fluorescently lit buggy at you in the dark and wondered why you weren’t staring back at me. Is it because you are seeing my right side, and that is my bad one? Or because you don’t care, you never did!

Now I’m crying in the Central tunnel and I don’t want to buy the lotus flower art from the man sitting on the floor and you are to blame. I tell myself I’d like to know him but I really wouldn’t, and you did that to me. 

You only live in my mind now and I’m beginning to believe you weren’t even wearing a striped sweater. It could’ve looked any which way and I’ve remembered wrong and now it exists only to me. I’ll attempt to knit it from one end as the other unravels and my memory fails me. In the end I’ll be left with scrappy yarn in my palm and a scratchy throat. I’m crying in the Central tunnel and you’re walking right beside me checking your watch and I don’t even know it because I don’t remember your fucking face.