I rode the bus to work today with:

A healthy young man possessed by drugs, laughing in silence and rubbing the seats beside him with his palms.

A man wearing a scowl, waxed mustache, mirrored aviator glasses, patched plaid golf cap, and possessed by nothing below the face.

A man shivering with his shoulders pulled in and his hands clasped in his lap, possessed by a look of terror and whom I thought could tell every time I glanced at him. He was facing front, perpendicular to me and four seats away and I could smell his jeans.

Then a man got on, clapped his hands in the air and yelled, "Beautiful!" He sat down, spat on the ground, started talking aloud about his welfare check and after some muttering said, "You call this 2010?!" Then we passed a cop car pulled half onto the curb with the lights flashing silently and an officer standing arms akimbo before a man with no legs.

At the bus stop on the way home I waited beside a very old man with tubes up his nose, standing beside a small, wheeled carrier with an oxygen tank on it. A man who's face and disposition are beyond description came walking down the street with a needle behind his ear like a cigarette, followed by a woman in bare feet talking to herself. Then a very tall, bald man with an imploded, toothless face came swaggering up the sidewalk crying. He stopped to talk to me. He said some kids on the bus tried to beat him up. When I ask him his name he says, "Jesus".