Bus

I was pretty excited about the old school bus rambling down the dirt road towards me.

Painted pink and orange and red, but faded desperately and chipping as if it had spent the last 17 years in the Mexican sun.

I knew who would be in there. A bus full of granola chomping hippies with long hair and hairy armpits, beads and shark tooth necklaces, the smell of patchouli.

It's 2024 and they looked exactly like I did in the late 80s and early 90s, having traded in my platform heels and short shorts, along with my bindle and funky 70 vibes for a bag of weed, bare feet, and the promise of eternity.

They were great when they pulled up, super accommodating and kind.

"Bruh, I love your work," said the twenty-something bearded boy who could have been mine, had either of mine ever had their first hit of the kind.

I saw them relaxing into their twenty-year-old immortality, their glistening eyes seeing my own timelessness.

I would have envied them, their youth, except that I would have just wasted it a second time, given the chance.

The color and music and the suntan skin, all of it was the same as when I was their age and when my parents were their ages.

The hippie yes for fucking life, wafting through the air on this quiet road in the middle of nowhere.

It didn't matter where or when we were, cut off jeans, flowing skirts.

They had it all and I was standing there with my decades long brushed hair and tailored jeans, having paid extra money for someone else to make them look distressed.

The only judge on the bus was me, and I had to make an effort to drum up some criticism.

Ghosts of past conversations coming from the mouth of people who likely never would have boarded this kind of bus in the first place.

My old boss saying, "I don't know if you'll be able to write without having some angst."

Me, a newly recovering alcoholic, afraid I'd lose my heart when I retired the booze.

My old friend Jen, who was so academic in her presentation, all I could ever see were her brains and my own degrees dissolving into cocaine dust and broken promises.

All of her writing is about something missing, she had said, and I was offended. Something lost, maybe, but not missing.

As if we couldn't find the terrible ache of our losses everywhere we looked back then.

But they were ghosts and disappeared or were shooed away by my 20-something crunchy entourage of long-haired poets and dreamers.

It was wild to see myself on the bus hovering around in the back rows with a couple of the louder, more preoccupied or engaged writers.

Me at 23, wild curls and severe green eyes, a long Indian cotton skirt and a black tank barefoot. Leg up on the back of the bench in front, hairy, laughing.

And then my little six-year-old self and nine, 13 even, all these little Dannys materializing like wooden Russian nesting dolls opened up to the world around them.

My 23-year-old was having the time of her life as usual in either complete denial or complete acceptance of the cavernous wound inside that was always as inviting as it was lonely.

Forgetting for the time the beautiful tragedies of being human, of having a heart and hurt and also wonder.

All of it easily couched as the bottle gets passed around.

My six-year-old self was pissed, so determined, fiercely even, to take the world by the balls.

She sat there red-faced and horrified that she would work so hard to keep the entire universe in place just so that I would take over at 13 and fuck it all up.

Her little pixie cut and tiny arms folded in front of her chest in quiet disgust.

13 year old me was a wide-eyed curious believer that 23 looked fun as fuck and tired of the stiff immaculate perfection of having performed all these years was reaching out her hand as the joint passed around pretending to belong right there where she was feet on the ground preppy waiting for magic

this old girl here remembering she is really ageless and timeless looked at my little younger selves with hope and love I cannot regret.

The life I lived to get here. Standing in front of you on a faded day glow school bus filled with music and promise and hope and possibility.

If only you knew back then how loved you are.

 If only you knew.