Earphones Left In
On the way to work with only my earphones in, I never got around to choosing what to listen to. I only want to block the noise, but my mind won't settle on any channel. With the earphones in and nothing playing, my steps turned awkward. The people on the evening bus, just staring out the windows, all wore that same expression. Blank-eyed, hands resting on the window frames. When did it start, this walking with earphones in and nothing playing. The dawn air is still cold, and only after I fasten my buttons and pull down my sleeves can I see where my steps should land. I, too, have started wearing earphones with nothing playing more and more. On the bus, with the scenery slipping past the window without a sound, that was when I could finally hear my own footsteps. That sound is clearer than any music, yet it never lingers for long. At the end of the alley the sound of the bus disappears, and instead a radio voice from the neighbor's window reaches me, very faintly. Walking through that in-between, it's fine for the earphones to play nothing at all. That sound is clearer than any music, yet it never lingers for long. So I put the earphones back in and close out the day, gazing blankly out the window.
The cold air lingered a long while in my ears once the earphones were out. I never knew the sound of the wind brushing past when the train doors open could be so distinct.
Once you've heard that wind, you can understand why the announcement for the next station seems to come from so far away.
Only after the bus left the stop did the window go quiet, and what stayed in my ears was not the engine but the stillness of that spot. There was a night when, as the evening wind came through the crack in the window, the earphones I wore making no sound at all felt more natural than anything.
That night's stillness stayed a moment even after the earphones came out. Winding the cord around my fingers, I knew from its not swaying that the bus had already passed through the alley.
When cold wind comes in as the subway doors open, I fiddle with the earphone cord and then just leave it. I suddenly remember someone standing across the platform, head bowed, pressing the back of a hand to the corner of their eye. Even without a sound flowing between those fingers, the footsteps going down the stairs were unmistakable.
The corner of an eye pressed with the back of a hand suddenly comes back to me. When I go down stairs, my footsteps sound unusually loud too, so I tend to place each step in time with that sound.
You're standing by the window with your earphones in. I'm only listening to your footsteps. Watching the lights go out one by one outside, you must know too that I won't stay long.
If I count the lights going out, then I've left that much time behind on the bus too. The sound changes a little every time the window passes under a streetlamp.
When the bus stopped at a light, the hollyhock in the flowerbed by the middle door bowed its head once in the wind. As that nod passed without a sound, does the sound of your footsteps brush past the same way?