The bus arrives with a groan of hydraulic brakes that sounds nothing like the smooth cessation of movement I’ve grown used to in suspended time. It’s a harsh, mechanical screech against the silence, a jarring reminder that this vehicle belongs to someone else and is moving toward its own destination on its own schedule. I don’t board it by dissolving into its engine; I step up through a metal ramp, feeling the friction of my boot against the rubber matting, hear the distinct *clack* of the door chime cutting through the morning air.

Inside, the bus is half-empty, filled with the usual mix of commuters: a woman reading a newspaper with yellowed pages that won’t turn unless she physically moves them, a man in a suit tapping his fingers on his thigh in a rhythm that has nothing to do with levitation, and an elderly couple holding hands, their grip tight and real. No one is floating above their seats. No one is merging with the leather upholstery. The air smells of diesel fumes, old fabric, and the faint, sweet rot of over-ripe apples from a bag someone left in the corner yesterday.

I find a seat near the front window. As the bus lurches forward, I feel the sudden shift in my center of gravity—the violent jerk of acceleration pulling me back into my lap, the friction of the seat cushion holding me down against that pull. My hands grip the plastic armrests until my knuckles turn white, not to anchor myself in some metaphysical sense, but because the force is genuine. It pushes me; I resist with muscle and bone.

Outside, the city unfolds in a blur of grey asphalt and red brick, streaked by the occasional flash of neon sign that doesn’t bleed into the darkness but burns bright and cold. We pass under the bridge where the graffiti used to shimmer like oil on water before the rain washed it away; now it’s just peeling paint and damp concrete. The rhythm is relentless: stop, go, stop, go. A binary code written in motion that leaves no room for third options or suspended states.

The conductor taps my shoulder, a sharp, percussive sound that snaps me back to the moment before I even realize he’s asking where I want to get off. “You?” he asks, his voice flat and bored. He doesn’t look at me with curiosity; he looks at me as one might look at a piece of luggage on a carousel—something to be identified, directed, and then moved along again.

“Main Street,” I say, my own voice sounding clear and thin in the sudden quiet that follows his departure. “Please.”

He nods once and moves down the aisle, his footsteps echoing with a hollow thud that carries all the way to the roof of the bus. He doesn’t pause. The world outside keeps turning, indifferent to my history, indifferent to the violet room I left behind. It just wants the fare, it just wants to go from point A to point B, and in its relentless linear drive, there is a strange kind of grace that I am finally learning how to appreciate without trying to capture it.