Number 10

// Megan Calvert

I said to my sister,
The number 10 bus
goes in one long loop
from my house in the city
to yours in the suburbs.

She said, What bus?

She had lived there
for more than a decade,
passed down the street
with the blue bus stop signs
and plastic shelters
twice a day to walk the dogs,
chatting with neighbors,
shopping at the “sore” on Frederick,
mocking its missing T.

She drove with her husband
four stops down the same road
to Jennings on Saturday nights
for a bottle of half-priced wine,
windows up the whole way there,
climate in, sound in,

never once noticing
the flat glass windshield,
the glowing 10,
the hydraulic release of the door,
or the people coming out of it,
too dark against the light.