Quiet Things

1.
The cars rise towards us in the blue morning in pieces: first the headlights, then a shape, a speed, a color, maybe a glimpse of driver: white sedan with brights on, tall woman frowning into the horizon. Technically there are speed limits but in a big empty floodplain you can see a cop car for miles. You can also see us: me and Ben waiting for the bus, but no one slows down for us either. No one picks up hitchhikers out here. I think something about the way the land spreads out makes people nervous for their insides. And anyway we're not perched on the side with thumbs out or anything; there's a bench and usually I'm sitting normally and Ben is sprawled all over me. I watch the side of the road where the bus comes; he watches everything else. Birds. Joshua trees that look like people we know. The sky, which he gives me detailed updates on every five minutes.

2.
The thing about watching cars come (hoping for the bus) is you can't hope for every single one. You have to hope rarely, so that half the time your hope is right. I try to explain this to ben, but he just says he hopes I will one day make sense.
I say I hope he will one day appreciate me pulling our bus towards us through sheer power of thought. He hopes I find true love and happiness with Nutella. I hope he learns to like someone for more than two minutes.
And so on.

3.
Right now the sky is this pulsating deep water blue, and it's fragile, it's on these crazy baby giraffe legs. And...there's this lightness at the horizon like swimming up, almost too late, when your vision is just whiteness until you break the surface and breathe. The whole sky knows it is about to be held up by the sun, can feel it but it's just been dark for so long.....

4.
On the bus, we will go to the way back of the bus. I will take window seat. He will curl up into me, me holding onto folds of his sweatshirt. It's freakishly cold because Marnie doesn't like to drive with the windows up. Says it's too quiet. Marnie is partially deaf.
I will hold Ben's bony edges and things will be dark and quiet. I will hum, a little. He will drool on my sweater, continuously. I will feel a strange sorriness, as though we are both orphans, or eloping on my wishes.