- He entered the bus unaware, save for his destination. He stood awhile by the driver,
waiting, though not conscious of waiting, until his pupils dilated and made room for the darkness.
Then he made his way to a seat.
- When seated, he noticed his sensations settling over him, thinking they somehow had been suspended
above him till, seated, they draped over him like a cover over a bird cage. He sat in the muted darkness.
- Next to him, by the window, sat the silhouette of a woman. He knew her as a woman because
the moving bus passed an occasional light and strobed her profile. And her hair was long.
Perhaps he should have supposed she was a woman; instead, he knew. She was. What woman he couldn’t say.
- The woman turned her head slowly toward him, seemed to pass her face through a medium thicker
than just the air surrounding them. The blur of her face gathered, then settled: two dark ovals
remained fixed in the white. He was arrested by her gaze, felt held, not unpleasantly.
Only they two were apparent to him and yet, not even they, but the space between them.
He was summoned to that space, compelled gently toward it. He made no conscious affirmation
to the pull, did not lust for the woman. Rather, he gave himself over, inclined his face
forward through the perimeter on his side.
- He met her there: was her lips against his, was engulfed by a flood of warmth, was overwhelmed.
He lost his sense. Gave it up with his eyes closed.
- He would think the experience later, while diving nude off the coast of Crete. His fear of the
strangeness dispelled by warm water closing over him, sleepy blackness behind his eyelids.
Sharing matter with something else, creating, between them, an entity with substance apart
from, and part of, them.
- He came back—the bus stopped with a jolt. He felt torn, slapped. Bewildered he looked about,
dazedly noted the woman sliding her backside in front of his face. He wondered if it had
or had not happened and later wondered, if it had happened, how was it he did not bump his nose?