“Bus Stop”
© 2025 by Michael L. Utley

she stood there
stoic and still
as a river rock cairn
at the crossroads
bus stop
every afternoon
alone
save for her
reluctant shadow
that always seemed
to pull away from her
clawing at the gravel
to unpin itself from this
dirty-faced girl
with willow whip arms
and a mangled knot
of corn silk hair

she stood there
by my grandfather’s
mailbox with the
shot-up targets
and broken beer bottles
glinting dully
in the weeds of the
four o’clock sun like
dusty brown cataracts
and waited for someone
who never arrived
staring soundlessly as the
folding school bus door
juddered shut
and exhaust fumes
enfolded her
in a hydrocarbon miasma

she stood there
in her too-big
ratty plaid jumper
of indeterminate hue
and mismatched sneakers
and scab-caked knees
rooted to the ground
like some obscure totem
some miniature monolith
weather-worn
eroded
her features smoothed
by the passage of eons
at this nowhere bus stop
somewhere east
of benignancy
paused between
moments
stranded between
the dots of the ellipsis…

she stood there
as we piled off the bus
each day
a mass of larval humanity
gummed together
in sweaty profusion
and exquisite ignorance
and ran past her
down red dirt roads
that sliced through
cheat grass and junipers
sage and pines
kicking up dust
in our manic wakes
a mindless stampede
of vacuous hubris
and nascent dark desires
our souls’ eyes shuttered
against grace and mercy
our young hearts
already blackened
by vainglory
we perceived her
incuriously
in our periphery
discerned her
absently
incidentally
our puerile minds
negating her
ripping her brusquely
from the cloth of our
reality

she stood there
waiting
as the cracks
in the world
began to show
arrivals
departures
childhood’s horrors
comings and goings
day and night
week after month
after year
after generation
and I recalled her
vaguely
a tenuous mirage on the
distant silver horizon
of youth
and my children
and their children
spoke cryptically
of the uncanny silent girl
at the bus stop
until her novelty wore off
and she disappeared
from their collective consciousness
as their own childhoods
unwound in a chaotic blur

and the cracks widened
and deepened
and the world spun slowly
to a stop

she stood there
stoic and still
as a river rock cairn
in the withering gloaming
at the end of time
where no bus
had stopped
for millennia
where the damned
no longer
gamboled and
cavorted
where sepulchral silence
clung shroud-like
to the bones
of the earth
waiting for
someone
no one
anyone
and I approached her
my back bent with age
my gait halting
my old man’s eyes
dim and rheumy
my breath a rasping wheeze
and she looked at me
with pallid marbled eyes
and I recognized her
at last
and I sensed
the world sigh
and I took her
cold, ashen hand
as the final
sunset faded
and I waited
with her