As the slanted autumnal rain falls, she waits for the bus at the corner of her street, regretful about not wearing something more waterproof than her jean jacket and scarf. She hoods the scarf around her head, but within a few minutes, it begins to droop soggily. She is about to risk fetching an umbrella from home when the red-and-white OC Transpo bus appears at the top of her street, like an ark. As she climbs aboard, she grins at the driver, sheepish. She chooses an empty seat in the middle of the bus, undrapes the drenched scarf from off her head, and gazes out the rain-spattered window, at the cars and bikes and people. It feels strange to be in the world again, around so much movement, that hasn’t stopped for a moment since her own world experienced its apocalypse, and yet still not a part of it. She has felt Other when riding the bus before, the times when she’s noticed she is the only brown person, the only woman. Now grief has made her Other in another way, but with this difference at least, she can hide and feel safe.

The automated voice—male and robotic—calls out each stop in English and French. “Vancouver Avenue. Avenue Vancouver.” Intermittently, the stop bell dings. Soon she registers little as she peers out the window, slipping into the semi-coma that is so alluring about riding the bus.

About ten minutes later, the automated voice calls out the stop for the Sunnyside branch of the library. With a sharp inhale, she awakens from her half-sleep and pulls the yellow cord. A quick dash from the bus stop and she finds herself in the dry refuge of the stone building.

Now indoors, she seeks the refuge of books. Memoirs written by others who have lost their soul mate. Who have lost themselves to trauma. And yet have managed to remake themselves from the rubble into something whole again, albeit with cracks. In books, maybe she will be able to find a way to understand the strangeness of her new inner landscape. If someone else out there has felt the way she feels, has thought the things she thinks, has heard the dark whispers, then maybe she isn’t so far gone after all, and there is still reason to hope.

Outside, she waits for another bus, in a mud-spattered shelter littered with cigarette butts and greying trampled gum. Within a few minutes, the bus arrives, and she squeezes in beside an elderly man with a shopping trolley. As the bus crawls up Bank Street, it cuts through the Glebe with its trendy high street storefronts: spa, florist, fair-trade-coffee shop, micro-brewery.

Once they pass under the Queensway, the street decays somewhat—gas station, pay-day loan office, Tim Horton’s. Condo developments have sprouted in the minimal patches of concrete where the old neighbourhood was clear-cut.