riding on the bus, oversized hardbound book spread across lap, messenger bag squeezed between feet on the dirty floor, listening in as a woman with an asymmetrical bob haircut (one side trimmed so short it barely caresses the top of her ear, the other side swept to her chin, all of it tangled and growing out a burgundy dye job), glass lamp bead earrings, and sports sandals points out Tri-Met stops to her aging mother who stares straight ahead and nods her head patiently even though the woman with the asymmetrical bob speaks in babytalk to her - as if she will not understand - and folds and unfolds her map, each time listing off all the sites she plans to show her in downtown Portland, her personal docent
I glance out the window at a construction tractor, a long, pencil-shaped tool attached at the front that says breaker in a sligtly tilted font, suspended just above the shoulder of the street and twenty feet behind, a piece of the tracker removed, left behind - the bucket attachment (or is it a shovel?), the one with teeth on the end, sitting in the center of an intersection, surrounded by caution tape, like a crime scene - a grisly severed hand with dirty fingernails
two stops later, the woman with the asymmetrical bob led her mother off the bus, repeating the list of Tri-Met stops and pointing pointing pointing at everything - the bank towers, the streets on her map, the bus as it pulls away