220 London bus

The 220 crosses West London on a fluorescent night.

You are sitting in front of the top floor on a double-decker London bus. From up there, your indifferent eyes see illuminated takeaway signs, and green traffic lights go by fast.

Mornings pile up until they all look the same.

In those early hours, you listen to Alan Isakov; it relaxes you and looking out the window, you take ephemeral photos with your eyes.

You look around as if everything belonged to a remote past, and you weren’t there. The line of time twists, and what you live is what you lived long ago.

The day begins to get light, but the moon refuses to go. She is still up there, hanging between pinky clouds. In the sky, areas of turquoise blue start making their way.

A female voice repeats, “220 to Wandsworth,” but you will get off before at Hammersmith.

You wake up insanely early, and you still feel asleep.

Unconnected thoughts appear and disappear. You watch them pass freely through your mind. It’s a nice feeling, like her fingernails running down your spine.

(Every time you draw her, her hair looks more red).

Background voices speak in languages you don’t understand, while mobile phones never seem to shut up.

You miss the days of silence.

When you are sleepy, your flow of thoughts is strangely fluid. You allow memories to mix with present things and things that don’t exist yet.

(A black and white hotel morning in Lisbon. It’s very early, and Sofia still sleeps between white sheets. You find her pretty and decide to take a picture. Then you continue sleeping).

The 220 continues on its way and stops at bells and hand gestures made by people on the street. New passengers enter the bus. You hope no one sits next to you, but you know it won’t. Everybody likes to sit at the front.

(Every time you draw her, you love her sharp nose. That face wouldn’t be that face without that nose).

The 220 stops one more time. More passengers enter; others leave the bus and get lost through frozen streets of blue.

Then someone sits next to you.

At first, you only see a thick blue coat occupying everything, some Reebook sneakers, and striped socks. Then you look at her discreetly. She doesn’t look at you. She wears her hair up, and her face looks abstracted.

Then she takes out a book and starts reading.

(Sofia brought you the last box when you lived at 7 Corretger Street in Barcelona’s flat. Her eyes seemed lost, like in another place. Then she said goodbye. The last thing you remember is the sound of her footsteps coming down the stairs).

The bus is complete, and all the conversations merge into something annoying. The passenger by you is reading absorbed. She doesn’t pay attention to anything beyond her book.

She reads Alice Munro.

(Every time you draw her, you can’t stop looking at her bony hands. You still don’t understand how that ring fits in her right thumb).

Across the Scrubs Lane railway bridge, the bus goes up and down a small hill, and an early ray of light goes through the big window. It is a soft light that comes from nowhere and makes you doubt it’s real.

So then and only then, she stops reading, looks away from the book, and closes her eyes while the bus pass by St Mary’s Cemetery. She takes a deep breath, and it seems that she starts crying. But you don’t look at her.

She continues reading, and a tear falls on the pages of her book.

You don’t know if the emotion comes from the book or because we are by St Mary’s Cemetery. Or both things together.

The 220 crosses Wood Lane, and the Westfield shopping center overcomes everything else. Then she closes her book, puts it in her bag, and gets off the bus. Now you identify her book. She was reading “Too much happiness” by Alice Munro.

(Sofia said that one day she would disappear. And so she did).

“220 to Wandsworth,” but you get off here.