bus number fourteen

by ling’ling

As an infinite number of grapes ripen on the vine and fall at the various stages of their striving journey towards a Platonic perfection yet only one manages to fall at the precise moment of the ideal, so an angel astride a

Flying Pigeon weaves her way up Fumin Lu blissfully unaware that in her the gods have violated the contract of their non-existence in a cumulative expression of perfection to exceed even their own pedestrian fantasies.

To see her face is to know that in her the universe has suddenly, unexpectedly and with absolute finality manifested its singular purpose in the curve of her delicate figure. Every history, every art, every violence, every sex, every thought ever conceived revealed as but a gloriously blind, witless stagger towards this moment.

In an explosion of sudden awareness all life in the Universe is stricken with a spontaneous knowledge: this is it! this is it! this is it! From the lowliest single-cell virus to alien life-forms so advanced that the mere shadow of their likeness has yet to be conceived by human thought. Hearts and minds across the universe turn in this moment to the intersection of Fumin Lu and Yan’an Lu as towards Mecca. Those fortunate enough to set eyes on the spectacle of her beauty are stricken deaf, dumb and blind and writhe helplessly on the ground in a perfect ecstasy.

As quickly as the moment comes so it passes under the wheels of bus number 14 as the vessel of her earthly sojourn is drawn into a 50 meter long streak on the canvas of Yan’an Lu in the shadow of a concrete overpass. Her annihilation as her beauty is utterly perfect and no form of human expression can adequately describe either, though an apologetic effort be made herein.

The driver disembarks slowly, lighting a cigarette he thinks to himself – laopo is going to be pissed when she finds out I’ll be late for dinner.