Cecil Baldwin

She wishes it contained all of those items, but she had packed it in a hurry.

Hadn't known she was leaving until a few minutes before she did.

She thinks about what she left behind and feels a deep regret, but she knows she'll never go back to get them.

She breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth.

She smells wild sage baking in the late afternoon sun, and she smells the exhaust of the cars from the highway.

She fiddles with the ring again, and then, acting on her decision a second before her mind is where she's made it, she takes the ring off and throws it.

It disappears into the dirt and brush across the road.

She wouldn't be able to find it again if she tried.

She's not going to try.

She looks again at the cardboard box, sifts through the contents, sees the bus coming, puts the box down, stands and waves at the bus and it pulls over.

It has no destination card, but she knows where it is going.

She doesn't glance back at the bench.

When the doors open with a low whoosh, she steps up onto the bus and the doors click shut again and the bus pulls away.

the cardboard box still sits on the bench.

So, a free box of stuff by the bus station, if anyone wants to grab it.

This has been Traffic.

Hey, does anyone hear that sound behind the sky?

It sounds like a duck, if the duck was the size of the universe, and also quite ill.

It sounds like a blender full of eggshells and glass.

Do you hear that?