Cold and Windy Bus Stops

(I dare you to find the words "cold," "wind," or any normal synonym thereof [e.g., "chill breeze"] in the following paragraphs!)

6:00 a.m.--from home to work

In the dark, all I could see were headlights and vague shapes. As they passed my little island of light, they flashed into existence and were gone before I could notice what they were. All I knew was that they were not the bus. I stood alone, trembling, seemingly the only live creature in the world besides those lights coming down the viaduct. The bus shelter did not provide much shelter. My ankles were bitten as severely as they had been when I was walking out in the wild beast's lair; that wild beast that "stings the toes and bites the nose" in the old folk song. Still, it was enough shelter for some comfort. I didn't have to pinch my hood shut anymore to keep my throat safe. I pulled my watch out of my pocket and checked the time. I wasn't late. The bus would come. My thawing hands fluttered into my purse and pulled out my Bible. Today was a day to read out loud.

9:00 a.m.--from work to school

The cars were definitely cars now; and the trucks were definitely trucks. Mormon Coulee Road was no easy street to cross, but I made it, panting, into the bus shelter. I made some remark about the weather and then was silent. My companions, a classmate and a stranger, were as silent as I was; even more silent, for their teeth were not chattering. The warm green that shone from almost every branch of every tree was belied by the savage air. Only a few astute maple trees had unpacked their autumn clothes. I shivered in my thin jacket and slacks. The maples were smarter than I was. I mentally resolved to break out my sweaters and such as soon as I got home.

3:45 p.m.--from school to home

The long, thick, gray clouds slid through the sky like sluggish railway trains, showing a stark contrast to the solid and stationary steeple of the nearby church. The young trees planted by the roadside waved like frantic hitchhikers. My hair became nearly as animated as Medusa's, whenever it managed to escape the confines of my hood. My thin, baggy pant legs decided that they were flags, and my goose-bumpy legs the flagpoles. Meanwhile, real flags on real flagpoles tugged at their strings and reached longingly into the free air. But the air was not free. It was under the command of a powerful force: the steam in the cloudy engines, the life-force in the trees and in my thin snakes of hair, and the delusion in my pant legs. I was reassured to see the bus come around the corner and to remember that not everything was under the influence of that force. It was not unstoppable. Gratefully I boarded the bus and sat down in the warmth and the calm.