Buses feel faster than their true velocity.

I stare at the driver’s black boots, boots with multiple soft and white scruffs but no crinkles or wrinkles, boots that will last forever. I love the fat gas pedals on buses. I imagine the encounter with the platform-like pedal as a fuzzy, electric boost to the ego.

Presently, the man’s foot is down almost all of the way, so we must be doing as best as we can.

The short light poles with antique lanterns, in charcoal gray move by quickly and steadily, and it strikes me dead-frozen that the only people who really get to enjoy these poles are all of the suicides who jump into the dirty Missouri River.