The Stillness Where They Sat
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. 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. Only after the bus left the stop did the window go quiet, and what remained in my ears was not the engine but the stillness of that place. There was a night when the evening wind came in through the gap in the window, and the earphones, still plugged in and making no sound, felt like the most natural thing. The stillness of that night stayed a while even after I took the earphones out. Winding the cord around my fingers, I knew by the way it stopped swaying that the bus had already passed the alley. 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. 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. In that place, there is still no sound at all.
Walking with the earphone cord in my pocket, the cord quietly coiled inside brushed my fingertips. Sitting by the window, I looked only at the place the wind had passed.
After I took out the earphones, the end of the uncoiled cord in my pocket brushed the ground. That sound made the rhythm of my steps.
After I take out my earphones, the sounds inside the bus tend to feel stranger than usual. Only then did I notice the door closes with a different sound at each stop. The speed at which the streetlamps outside slip away differs a little too.
Since I started hearing a different door-closing sound at every stop, I find myself listening for it at the next one without meaning to. That sound feels like a bridge to the world beyond my earphones, so my ears moved slowly, at the speed the streetlamps slipped away.
While the bus stood still, the streetlamp light reflected in the window didn't waver. This morning too I sat in that seat and passed the same light. Behind the lamp going out without a sound, I watched the alley quietly open the morning.