Night Bus Herbarium

The night bus exhales and opens its mouth to the curb, a slow hinge of light; we climb in with our small weather. Tickets click like beetle shells in a drawer.

Glass rattles with rain, and the city leans close, wet neon smearing across cheeks like a kiss of ink. Inside, we carry our silent garden of hours.

A man folds a map until it becomes a leaf, a girl turns her headphones up, and the bass is a river. Each stop is a seed the pavement agrees to hold.

When the route loops back, the driver hums under breath, and the bus becomes a moving herbarium, pressed blooms of conversations, still warm in the dark.