There was a dead guy
sitting on the bus
in front of me tonight.
He was calling the office
on his cell phone
giving some last minute
instructions to some poor
bastard who worked for him.
He was talking in such a loud,
obnoxious voice I turned
to look if he was disturbing
anyone else. But the woman
across the aisle reading
the NY Times was dead
too and so were the couple
chatting behind her. In fact,
it seemed as if I were the only
living person on the whole
fucking bus. Naturally,
I began to get worried.
I was speeding down the
turnpike in a busload of dead
folks passed a landscape
of petrochemical drums and
mobster swampland. And
then I made the mistake
of looking in the rearview
mirror and seeing the bus
driver’s eyes looking directly
at me. I knew right then I
wasn’t going home alive
that night. It didn’t make a
difference whether he drove
off the bridge or slammed into
a cement mixer. I looked at
my pale reflection in the
darkening window and saw
what he saw: another pale-
faced dead commuter on
her way home to her apartment,
her cat, her microwaved dinner,
her tv, and moonlit sexless bed.
I wanted to laugh but the dead
don’t laugh they just sort of
unhinge their jaws in mute surprise.
Besides, even among the dead
I didn’t want to seem insane.
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