+ vibes

Abandoning New York and running back to it feels much better than staying put, though I’ve officially picked a seat on too many buses to claim stability. I fall shallowly in love with passing towns as I rest my thoughts on the chattering window, never minding when my head jerks too hard—it is then I’m sure that I’m moving. The leaving is easy as a passenger; I never go too far. 

 I am a leaver, and have been long enough to know that creating impermanent change has a drug-like effect; settling into my seat, about to depart on a long-trip, I feel high on possibility. Watching miles pass, marked by city limit signs and playlists ending, feels like a sort of peaceful productivity. What is doing something if not putting it behind you?

Creating space between myself and everything else makes the world feel still. Even if only for two hours, transit antagonizes loneliness. With no where else to be and nothing else to do, it at the very least forgives it. I am free of everything save hope until I once again step onto the reality soaked streets beneath one of my many skylines. 

Bus ride to bus ride I sit alone with a coffee, wondering what might be changing while I sit among the others who are coming and going, creating space and closing it, missing and abandoning. All of us leavers, for better or worse, a little less lonely in motion. 

-e