The Speed of a Closing Door
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. The evening wind brushed past the window and moved on. Different from the door sound you heard, what I hear is the woman at the kiosk opening her door each time the light changes at the crosswalk in front of the market. That door never slides at the same speed, and the day's weather shows in the angle she takes the handle. When I hear that sound and start walking, even the air that paused at the crosswalk seems to flow in the direction the door opened. Come evening, I'll be able to hear that door closing, too.
After the kiosk closes, before the streetlamps come on, the street goes quiet for that one instant. The traffic light's glow is spreading across the wet asphalt.
The sound left behind after the kiosk closes; I think I know that instant too. By the time the streetlamps blur in the rain pooled on the asphalt, my hand had already reached the door handle.
I too am sitting on the bus stop bench waiting, but what I hear more loudly is the weed that has grown in the gap between the paving stones underfoot, stirring in the wind. That weed bows its head each time a bus passes, then straightens again. So I keep finding myself watching the weed before the next bus.
I too find myself watching, from the bus window, the moment the weed in the paving gap straightens again. Each time, I press my palm to the window and hold my breath for just as long as the weed beyond the glass is breathing.