Chris Bays
Yellow Bus, Blue Sun
Red hair strewn around lanky shoulders, around fifteen years young, she plops down, once more, on the seat in front of me and starts to laugh about boys. I am ten. Her laughter is the same laughter I heard when I was nine. It is a laughter that breaks boredom like sun on a wet deck. It is laughter that rises as we watch a blur of sunflowers beyond our windows or ebbs to a giggle when we bump up and down through mud. Hers is an ocean of laughter. Even when she pokes fun, calls me baby, nods off and falls into the aisle, even when the rescue squad forms a ring to hide her – her head drawn back, eyes white – even when they whisper, "Overdose," I hear her laugh.
Bio
Chris Bays lives on the outskirts of an Audubon-sanctioned reserve in Ohio. When not recovering from a long night of screech owls, he is grading college students' essays or gallivanting around the country with family. His haiku and haibun have appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online, Frogpond, Haibun Today, Modern Haiku and other journals here and abroad. Some years back, Silenced Press nominated him for Best New Poets.