you entered the room as powder

As surrealist writer Peter Cornell spots the bus station in the distance, his stride changes from one of timid exploration to a determined stroll. It’s his first week in a new town that he reluctantly calls home, and it shows — in the way he fumbles with his new set of keys, in the deliberate effort not to look around, and in the small failure of doing so anyway. Preoccupied with the anticipatory fear one feels at the end not of a journey but a move, he seems to have forgotten whether it was the 505 or the 404 he had to take. Both lines pass this very stop, their numbers uncannily suggestive of some form of failure or threat. Upon entering the oncoming vehicle — taking a chance in doing so — he wonders if the public transport planning department responsible for naming local routes is aware of this potential confusion and, frankly, the rather bad omen it creates. He checks the multi- colored network map above the double-glazed sliding doors, tilted slightly toward its observer. His left index finger supports his lower lip while the right traces the projected route of each line. He learns that this stop is the only point where the 505 and 404 meet — a satisfactory explanation for the confusion, and an alarming confirmation of the omen. Both lines form a single loop that ends where it began: two connected circuits emerg- ing and resolving within Peter Cornell. Still uncertain if he’s on the right bus, he comforts himself with the thought that the soft descent of the road ahead must correspond to the southern direction he intends. Habit, he knows, has the power to render one’s surroundings invisible. Wanting to take it all in, he chooses a window seat on the right, assuming the coastline will appear there eventually. As he gives in to gravity, the air inside the upholstery compresses tightly; he turns his attention outward, but the glass, marked by a corona of grease where his head might rest, refuses to yield a view. His gaze shifts into the window itself at his own reflection, into his memory and back at the glass — catching a silver strand of hair, a flash of creamy shoulder — bouncing between surfaces, almost looking out, yet really at it, as if testing the pane’s clarity, wondering whether it was clean or not. He closes his eyes to reset his vision. Enamored by the prospect of the unknown, still equipped with the darting precision of an arrow cutting through the thick, cold air of a new environment, he finally looks beyond the glass. The bus soars along a paved desert road, surrounded by a vast deposit of bones and stones pulverized into dust.