We sat too close on the couch. Sure, four of us were pressed together like sacks of flour, so maybe we sat too close from circumstance rather than chemical attraction. But as our thighs touched while we all love/hate-watched Coyote Ugly over bourbon, my mind did that thing minds do…

Last week, after a particularly hard class, she put on Get What You Give and turned the lights out for what she called a meditation ride.  “This is your time,” she announced. “Give yourself what you need.”

It felt more like a challenge than encouragement. Because damn it, at any given moment I have no idea what I need.

He leaned in, wrapped his flanneled arms around me, and held on. We parted, and when he looked me in the eye he realized who I was: a stranger.

When I was about nine, my neighbor Kevin and I were dangerously sitting on our knees looking out the back of our school bus, waving to the line of cars behind us . Kevin, a well known prankster, was issued a citation by our bus driver. I was not. 

I didn’t even have the heart to cry over these spilt words. So I took some melatonin and went to sleep, angry at the 26 letters stretched across my keyboard. If I could just mash them down in the right order, I could actually create something, you know? And it’s been a long time since I created something.

From my vantage point on public transit, I get a bus-eye view into the cars and lives of hundreds of weary commuters. They sip their coffee or stare at their phones instead of the road, the corners of their lips pulled down.