Pieta
By Ann Conway
On the bus a man lurches forward and stumbles down the aisle toward me.
I had noticed him, this man who stared from the side facing seats in front. He was fiftyish and still handsome, but seemed diminished; the effect of his powerful body held back by a blurred look, a confusion about the eyes. This man, of whom I was a little afraid, crashes into the seat across from me, where an older woman sits by the scratched window. She has grey permed hair, is stocky and barefaced. The man—her son? husband? now burrows his head into her deep soft chest, his body gathered so he lies sideways across the seat; his muscular torso intrudes into the aisle. I gaze at the great curved mound of him as his jacket rides up so his pale lower back and even the crack of his hairy rear are revealed. I see the woman pulling him in, her arm around his neck, his shoulder. Her chin lifts, and her mouth is determined as she cradles the man on one side, and clutches her giant pocketbook on the other. When I look around, I see that none of the dozen or so bus riders are laughing or staring; instead their eyes are downcast in a sort of reverence. The daily snarling and lunging do not live here. Here, where it seems that distilled injury, distilled love are really all you ever see, every day, all the time, on the bus and on the street. |