The Girl at the Bus Stop

She stands there, staring down the street with a blank look, a focused look, a tired look. Her books are pressed against her chest as she wraps both arms around them; a dirt-green colored bag slants across her right shoulder. It is hard to tell what her shirt looks like, but it's almost certain it resembles every other female uniform across the country---a buttoned shirt with a pocket, matched with a pleated skirt. Black socks rise to just beneath her knees.

A pair of glasses with a black, rectangular frame sit upon her nose, which may explain why she has a focused look. A student, after all, is meant to look studious, serious---disciplined. Even when she stands waiting for the bus. At attention! What a thought. I searched my mind to speculate what the girl might have been thinking. She may be new here, like me. That's why underneath that poised look she betrays a sense of insecurity, so exhaustively disguised. But more likely she has been standing there for the two-hundred-and-twenty-second day. She had stood there every single morning. To catch the bus, to catch her breath, to catch a glimpse of her promising future.

Maybe someone told her she should wait there for the forty-second bus. It runs through Nang-Gang and will bring her to her school. But now the fifty-second bus pulls up against the bus stop, two passengers alight, and the driver pauses to find that no one is getting on. The door closes and the rest are whisked away, all staring out their windows with an almost pitiful look at those left behind. Blank, focused, yet unmistakenably tired.

Who will bring her to her destination? The girl, for the first time, shifts her legs as if to regain her comfort zone. Her gaze drops but it comes up again. It is all right. Her bus will come.