The sun came out today and I walked to a lonely, isolated bus stop. A woman joined me in my loneliness just a couple of minutes after I came. She constantly moved her right leg, an uncontrollable habit of hers, and inhaled her cigarette like oxygen, smoke floating around her. Then, when she got tired of puffing it in and out, she threw it a foot away, on the edge of the crosswalk. I had met a living cigarette. From the corner of my eye, I could see her glancing at me, wondering why I was addicted to the music that played through my earphones. We were both addicts.
Inside the bus, where I was still lost in my own state of mind, there were many lonely people who had destinations, jobs, families, dreams even bigger than mine. But I had no destination. I could sit in my seat for hours, and I would not be late for any meetings, for any dates, for any dinners. I would be late for nothing. I wished I had a destination. I wished I had a plan, a little agenda that would break me away from my solitude, away from my languor.
I left the bus with my headphones still in my ears. And she left the bus with another cigarette. The cigarette was her only companion that day and the music was mine. I could not part from the songs that kept me moving straight ahead, to a path that was already drawn for me. And she couldn’t part from her lighter, the only one that lit her lonely mind.