The bus stop at 4:07 a.m.

It’s raining lightly, the kind that doesn’t soak you but makes everything feel like it’s been dipped in glass. I’m standing at the old bus stop on Maple—no sign, no shelter, just a cracked concrete slab and a bench where someone once left a folded newspaper. The route hasn’t run in years. Still, I wait. Not for a bus. For the quiet between systems. The city breathes differently here, not in motion but in absence. And somehow, that feels more honest than any schedule ever did.