By Marina T
My bracelet caught on the cracked vinyl seat just as the bus doors opened. You looked down at me struggling to move our bags from the aisle, sitting monk-still as people unceremoniously squeezed past us.
Wool knotted in my stomach as I tried to free myself. “You goin’ to help?” I asked. But no, you just sat with a hand on my thigh, rusty wedding band reflecting the artificial light.
My bracelet freed and I moved the bags. You tucked my hair behind my ear and kissed my neck with chapped lips. “I love you,” you said. I turned away.
What just happened?
My question, also. What’s going on here? Unhappy marriage, couple on a bus, but—he looks down, yet his hand is on her thigh? Looks down from where? I first I thought he was a spirit. Not sure.
Rusty wedding band? Tarnished, maybe. This took me out of the story, and like others, I don’t understand it. Why would you get nervous about being momentarily snagged? Anyway, I appreciate the effort. Some just don’t land as well as others.
I can feel this story very strongly. Of course you get nervous if a bracelet, which you presumably don’t want to break, gets snagged just as the bus doors open and this is your stop. Her husband is looking down on her because she is bending trying to move the luggage and he is being anything but helpful or maybe he is just blocked. The rusty wedding ring, symbolic I would say of a very tired marriage but the intimate gesture of him tucking her hair behind her ear and kissing her neck, an erogenous zone, feels like an attempt on his part to rescue a lost situation, whether long or short term. I could imagine that this story is true.
This story is plausible to me as well and poetic. I too see the rusty wedding ring as symbolic and the chapped lips, just as the cracked vinyl seat may be a symbol for being a bit worn out. And maybe they can both snag things; a bracelet, a marriage?