A Branch Swaying Between Fading Lights

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 was standing there waiting for the first bus of the morning, and the windows of the building across the street were going dark one square at a time. Between those lights, the branches of a persimmon tree beyond a wall were swaying in the wind. That time seems long, but once it passes nothing remains of it. If you saw the persimmon branches swaying between the fading lights, then the wind was passing through that dawn too. 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. I often pass the time looking at the hand straps inside an empty bus, hearing nothing at all. That sound changes a little each time the window passes beneath a streetlight. When the bus stops and the doors open, only then can I see where I was standing. Watching the lights go out one by one outside, I've left that much time behind on the bus. With each light that goes out, my footsteps seem to grow a little clearer. At the end of the alley the sound of the bus disappears, and instead the light from the neighbor's window lay there on the road.