Now the bus ride in becomes a daily pattern, the look of the store fronts as we get into town. The growing bits of scrap and rubble surrounding the homeless camps. The awareness of how different it is here than in my neighborhood in the suburbs. Off the bus and onto the street, pigeons picking at puke on the sidewalk. People in masks, everything I touch feels unclean. Part of me wants to just get it so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Tuning out on the ride home, enjoying the half hour it takes to get out of town and over the lake through the stops. They used to take trains from here into Seattle to get mail and supplies. They had to worry about Indians. What do we have to worry about, really? How much is really in our control. The bus driver wears a mask and looks anonymous but waves back when I say thanks, and pull the chord.

Categories: Memoir, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, journal writing, Memoir, pacific northwest, prose, Seattle, William Pearse writer