7.04 to Birmingham

Sometimes the sun shines. It's nice to notice it.

It's still dark outside but there's no stars. It's early. I'm on the 7.04 bus into Birmingham and I'm squashed up against the freezing, condensation-covered window so closely that my shoulder rubs against it making my coat damp. I push out of my mind the thought that this is the collective breath of everybody on the bus and the fact that it must carry billions of bacteria which is now on my person. For fuck's sake. I can never just switch off when I'm on the bus, it's always thinking time for me but I definitely didn't want to think about that.

The kid sitting next to me is watching reels on his phone and he's so engrossed that he doesn't realise that every time the bus turns a corner or pulls to a halt, he shoves my shoulder even further onto the wet window, not even trying to keep to his side of the seat. Bless him. He's not the only one engrossed. Everyone is on their phone. All the people packed into seats in front of me almost look headless as they nod into their screens.

There's usually nothing much to see out of the window on this journey, particularly if you take it five days a week like I do. It's all generic. My bus takes a semi-straight road from south to central Birmingham past housing estates, village-like suburbs varying in desirability and a couple of bigger landmarks of the local area, if you can call them that: a small conservation zoo, Edgbaston cricket ground. Pretty boring.

I'm sitting on the left side and out of the dirty window I can just see grey. Grey blurred by the breath of everybody on this freezing bus. But on the right side, orange tints the ash just beyond the houses on houses and shops and trees. It glows around them like a candle lighting a dark room. And as the bus ambles slowly through the commute traffic, the glow becomes more intense, turning the clouds pink and purple and swelling as if it's alive. How is nobody else noticing this?

I watch it and I forget that I'm cold. I wonder at the beauty and the beat of the earth. I think about how tiny we all are. How the hundred or so people on this bus are all heading in the same direction, following this sunrise into town yet none of us apart from me, and maybe the driver, seems to know. It's a secret left out in the open, a clue everybody overlooks because it's just there.

And by the time I'm off the bus I've got my phone out. Fantasia's When I See U playing through my earphones. I run it back to the beginning because I love it so much. It's a vibe. Melodic, upbeat, hopeful, proper cheesy. It's a vibe.

I light a cigarette and I make my way through town over the new tram lines and down towards the learning quarter where my college sits amongst towering university building and student halls. My phone is still out, the camera app already open so I can catch the sun. It's still so cold and I can't tell what is smoke or warm breath in the air. The sky hums orange and blue now through the staggered outlines of hotels and shops, bouncing off glass and metal.

I stand stock still when I see it hanging over the building site behind Moor Street Station. The traffic lights turn red to stop the buses in divine timing and I catch just a glimpse of it on the horizon: bright and gold and gorgeous.

When I look up, there's a woman doing exactly the same as me. She sees me too and we smile. We're passing eachother now and we both say how beautiful it is and we smile again. And I keep smiling and smoking my cigarette while I walk to work looking like a mad woman now to anybody passing me. If the bus is anything to go by, I don't think I'm in any danger of being spotted.

The sun and Fantasia singing romantic shit in my ear and the universe-ordained traffic light stop and sharing a secret with a stranger absolutely made my day. Not because of anything profound, just the few minutes I forgot that I was freezing cold and just felt human.

I would say look up. Look out. Look beyond the grey. But to be honest, it doesn't matter because the secret is safe with me.