Streetlight Spreading on a Door Handle

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. After the kiosk door closes, before the streetlights come on, the street goes quiet for that brief instant. The traffic light's glow is spreading across the wet asphalt. The sound that stays after the kiosk door closes, I think I know that instant too. By the time the streetlight spread across the rain-pooled asphalt, my hand was already on the door handle.