Silver

In high school, I stayed out past bedtime, and sometimes past public transit hours. In search of lost time, regaining years of harsh discipline, I walked home and let my mind wander for an hour or so. So precious was this solitude, utter and absolute in the years ere my first smartphone plan, that if I boarded a bus at midnight, I stayed on and rode all the way to the terminal at the Boardwalk. The route looped back to my neighborhood after the driver finished his smoke or piss, but if the bus was out of service he kicked me off and left me to savor the air of the new part of town, the fresh future of the city I called my own.