Bruce

The bus arrived early, as if it had somewhere more important to be. Dry leaves were spinning in the air. I stepped off, hugging the corner of the stop with my cane like someone waiting for something they weren't sure would come. Maybe someone. Maybe a moment that made sense.

Just a waystation. One of those forgotten edges of town where time wears a cheap jacket and waits for a connecting bus elsewhere.

That's when Bruce materialized. Not "walked up"—materialized, like people who don't quite live in this world but keep finding ways to crash into it.

He stood awkwardly to my left.

"Hello," he said, like a test.

"Hello," I answered, like a formality.

Then came the question—not cruel, not clumsy, just human.

"Are you blind?"

I nodded. Or said yes. Doesn't matter. Both mean you've learned how to not flinch.

"I'm sorry," he said.

I shrugged. Or maybe smiled. It was early; the world hadn't decided yet if it was kind today.

"Why?" I asked. "You haven't done anything."

Bruce was the kind of man who apologizes for the weather, for taxes, for the blind luck that makes people blind.

He held out an ID card in his hand because sometimes proof feels like empathy.

"Can you see my name?" he asked.

I shook my head.

So he took my finger like it was a sacred thing, traced it along plastic letters, convinced touch can reveal names unseen.

"Can you feel that?"

"No."

"But you can tell it's an ID?"

"It is, isn't it?"

Bruce had white hair. I said so.

He laughed like he hadn't expected anyone to notice.

"You can see that?" he asked, astonished.

He caught my smile, and chuckled through the burden of his years.

We talked like people trying to remember how conversation works. The kind of talk that loops—circular, like life, like grief.

He was from Venus. Or up the street. Or both.

He declared, after a pause, that he too was blind, cautiously testing an explanation. Said he lived in a halfway house. That the store was stealing his money, but not really. That they were just trying to keep him from drinking.

"You drink much?" I asked.

"Just to forget," he said.

The cops were after him.

"Not bad cops. Just those on a schedule," he said.

"Drinking," he said, "that's all it takes sometimes."

Then he bumped into my prosthetic hand. Flinched like he'd broken something. Apologized again. Touched my shoulder like confession required contact.

"What happened? I'm sorry. What… Is the other hand real? I'm sorry"

Muttering, his tongue overrun by rushing questions. He asked about towels. Dirt. Drying. Things that make you feel human when the world tries not to.

"How do you use the cane with the fake one?"

"I don't, Bruce. I've just switched the cane to it so I can put my other hand in my pocket. It's cold out."

He said the mother of God was blind. I nodded. Why not?

His voice lowering, he declared that they used electric chairs in 1917. He thought it a good idea. "It felt good."

A bus groaned somewhere down the street.

Lost in thought, he whispered he didn't kill anyone.

"Yup. Guns are no good," he said to an internal monologue.

We stood there—two men not really waiting for buses. Just waiting for the world to slow down enough to make room for them.

"So, Bruce, what are you doing today?"

"I'm talking to you."

"Were you heading somewhere?"

He pondered. Then belched.

Then struggled recalling something as he set off.

He faded into the wind, unfinished, like the rest of the morning.