His arm was tired. The cold steel bars hung from the ceiling. The ceiling? He wondered if buses had ceilings.

His arm hung limply from one such bar, running parallel to streets and cars flowing past outside the inch-thick windows.

He stared down at the floor, if buses have floors. Lines were cut perfectly into black plastic. He wondered how many footsteps could have stepped onto and over each and every line, where each of those individuals might have gone or been.

Drawing lines between the lines.

He immediately spotted an inconsistency. Bright color. Pink. A mass of pink. A backpack.

Her toenails matched her backpack. He wondered how many people made that connection or would ever make that connection, if he was some kind of pervert for even considering it, for noticing.

She wore glasses, had brown hair in a short ponytail, skin an odd white. Ordinary, average, but radiant.

At least to him.

The bus was cold, frigid, the conditioned air blasting from vents hidden somewhere in the existent or nonexistent ceiling. He could see the cold on her skin, her face, her lips. But there was a warmth, underlying, a blanket covering her insides.

The cold. It seemed to attract gravity to her face, lips down-turned, a sense of concern in her eyebrows.

The warmth. It showed him that there was still happiness, that there were smiles somewhere down the road in those down-turned lips.

He saw himself sitting nest to her, with her. A shared comfort found within one another and a blanket that warmed their insides, both, simultaneously.

This was her stop. She was gathering her things, her backpack, her blanket.

This was it.

The pink in her toenails came alive, moved towards him.

This was his chance.

She was right there, right before his eyes and a even a little bit after.

His mouth gaped open, his throat unable to make any vocalizations, the words buried under so many feet of dirt and clay.

And she was gone. His mouth still hung open.

He continued to wonder. Drawing lines between the lines because he had lost one of his own, cut through the middle by hesitant scissors.

He stared back down at the bus floor, no pink or toes, just black.

Lines.

His arm was tired.

His body was tired.