The Sound of Closing Doors

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. When I take the earphones out, the sounds inside the bus often seem stranger than usual. Only then did I notice that the doors close with a different sound at every stop. The speed at which the streetlights slip away outside differs a little too. Since I started hearing a different door sound at every stop, I find myself listening for the next one without meaning to. That sound feels like a bridge to the world beyond the earphones, so my ears moved slowly, at the pace of the streetlights slipping away. The night you left the window open, I heard the curtain rippling in the wind. I fell asleep in the place that wind had passed through. The sleep you found where the wind had passed must have held even the footsteps of someone passing outside the window. Until that sound touched the window frame and scattered, I was holding my breath without knowing it. 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 place where the evening wind lingered at the window and moved on, that time is still there, waiting for something.