'Me Ves Y Sufres'

I've yet to have my dinner, I've been waiting as usual. The buses move so slowly that I allow myself the luxury of a cigarette. The air is humid, winds are blowing in from the sea. The wars are just beginning, I think to myself as I eye the symbols surrounding the bus terminal in the form of flags, banners. Scales, rockets, moons, daggers. I let the smoke linger around me, consciously distant from the other commuters. It starts to get to cold.

A trishaw stops a few meters away from me. Two ladies alight from it, the younger one almost immediately opens her purse and hands four ringgit to the driver and gestures to the other to hurry up, as she leads the way to a bus. The driver seems stupefied for the moment and then shouts to her that she needs to pay more. She doesn't even turn, instead, she retaliates by saying that some girl told her that it was only two ringgit and that was what she handed him, four for two persons, and waves him off rudely, as if to indicate that was the end of the conversation. Her companion, fragile with age, walks slowly towards the bus that she is on.

I'm sorry, I didn't say to the driver.

You could read the confusion in his face. His eyes. He was still sitting on his cycle when their bus left, and then, resigning himself to what was dealt, he turns the trishaw and makes his way back to town.

I put out my cigarette on a tissue, in a tray on the plastic litter bin and watch as the embers slowly transmit itself unto the paper, eating it away. I wait, again.