bus out of Pili.

Stepping inside the bus going to Naga, he felt a certain sense of dislocation at four o'clock in the morning. He wanted to put the blame on the bus, not with how he felt at that point. There was this pervading scent of jackfruit inside the bus suddenly; swift and everywhere. He sat near a window, to breathe the early morning air and his face numbed in the cold biting wind of the dark infant morning. He gazed up and stared at the black, thinking how the vacuum of outer space would feel like right now. This was strangeness staring back in black and straight at him.

The almost empty bus rattled along; metal groaning for want of passengers and human noise. The fluorescent light inside flickering imperceptibly made the sense of motion just more pronounced and more otherwordly like he wasn't supposed to be there and he knew he wasn't; he was supposed to be somewhere warm and familiar.

So he tried to think of other things but the memory of a recent hurried lovemaking clung to him like a second skin, like peeling sunburned skin and he smiled instead, feeling warm despite the chill. He could feel and smell it off him like some aura of warmth and intimacy and he smiled, contented, that it wasn't just bodies colliding.

It was still uncomfortable seeing all that black and strangeness, and as he spaced out in the asphalt of Maharlika Highway in a bus that smelled of ripe jackfruit, he could only think of her and familiarity and of the few hours left before he would have to leave for strangeness and permanent dislocation.

It has been a long time since he missed anybody this way. He missed her smile and the way she closed her eyes.