The #8

There is a man on the bus who is reading a book, or there is a man on the bus who is not reading a book but it is open on his lap and 'water' is the only word visible in the title since his sleeve obscures the rest. Or the man has a book open on his lap but he is asleep and the person next to him is reading his book, nudging him in such a way that soft currents from morning sighs and the mechanical doors that open and close somehow manage to turn pages in time to the sidelong glance tracing something about water through the margins and down each page. Or there is no book and there is only a man sleeping with the word 'water' in his lap like a puddle on the bus and he is snoring loud dreams of the world passing by through a window that's directly in front of him. He looks up from the nothing he is reading since the book has run through his fingers and pooled on the floor into a foot-print covered pulp of crumpled newsprint and he looks up to a sidelong glare from the person sitting next to him, breathing heavily as that person takes a seat, or he writhes slightly to avoid a different man, overflowingly fat, to his right but the man still does not manage to see anything because he still snores is still asleep and still looking up and the world is moving by outside too quickly and too blinding bright for discerning and then there is a rubber smothered buzz and a green light goes on somewhere and the door opens and the water in the man's lap evaporates and suddenly there is only sun, sun so bright it scrubs green into the deepest corner of each shadow and there is the vacant lot that opens the city to clear skies just beyond a row of tenentless buildings still as vacant as the lot and made in multiple shades of mute and sullen brick and the man is no longer there. Perhaps this is or is not why, dissatisfied, without a book, or thirsty, the three pedestrians dissipate in cardinal directions around every corner but one, unturned.