The summers with Dad
when I was a kid
started at that Greyhound station,
that last stop before departure.
It smelled like diesel,
sadness,
and old clothes
that had been out of style for years.
My brother and I
holding tickets
like they meant something,
like paper could decide
where you belonged.
A lump in my throat
that didn’t leave,
no matter how much soda pop
I tried to wash it down with.
Strangers everywhere.
Men with eyes
lost on thousands of miles of highway
and headlight madness.
Odd-looking women dressed in layers,
clutching their purses
like every man was a thief.
Time has stolen a lot from them.
A kid, red-faced,
crying into a sleeve
his parents ignore.
We boarded
like cattle
headed for the slaughterhouse.
The engine grinded to life
like it was tired already,
like it knew the trip was too long.
We pulled out slow.
An electric hum stayed in the air.
City lights bleeding
into the rearview mirror.
I watched raindrops race down wet glass.
The one I bet on
always lost.
Small conversations buzzing—
**** I didn’t understand.
Then a soft silence.
And the violence of motion.
Outside the window—
Iowa flattening itself out
beneath cornfields and acres of land,
expansive,
like it had finally stopped arguing
with the sky.
Somewhere toward the back of the bus
a man chain-smoked cigarettes.
Greyhound rules didn’t matter much
out there in the dark.
He just stared out the window,
like the road had answers
he’d been asking for too long—
answers he couldn’t find
in women or *****
A portable radio hissed in his lap,
volume low enough
to feel like a secret
or an oath.
Simon and Garfunkel drifted through it—
Homeward Bound, maybe,
Scarborough Fair, maybe something
about love and leaving.
Soft songs about being lost,
about coming back too late,
about people who change over time
or never really arrive
at the same place more than once.
It didn’t feel out of place.
It felt like it belonged there—
like the whole bus already knew the song
in the fiber of the seats
and the rain-soaked windows.
Paul Simon’s soprano voice
mixed like a potion
with diesel loneliness,
tire noise,
and the steady ache of distance
stretching over highways
mile after mile.
And for a while, nobody talked at all.
I watched horses eating hay
on farms sliding past the window.
I bought candy bars
at little stops along the way,
then boarded the bus again
and watched the world
slowly disappear
into its own sadness.