The Bus That Only Stops for the Heartbroken

The Bus That Only Stops for the Heartbroken

By [Muhammad Saqib]

I was standing under the flickering street lamp on Fair view and 10th when I first saw the bus.

There was no sound—no rumble of tires, no hiss of air brakes. Just a glow in the fog and the quiet arrival of something that shouldn’t have been there. Midnight buses don’t run through our neighbourhood. I checked my phone. 12:17 AM. My feet were soaked from the puddle I hadn’t seen earlier. My chest felt heavier than my coat.

I didn’t expect it to stop.

The door sighed open. A man in a slate gray uniform gave me a single nod, as though he had been expecting me. He didn’t ask for a fare.

I hesitated. “Where does it go?”

“Wherever the pain leads,” he said, as if that explained everything.

I got on.

There were only three other passengers. A girl with smeared eyeliner stared out the window, clutching a photo of someone she couldn’t stop loving. A middle-aged man wrung his hands, whispering a name under his breath like a mantra. And a teenage boy tapped frantically on his phone, eyes red from trying not to cry.

I sat down in the middle. The seat was warm.

The bus pulled away, not with a lurch, but like slipping into a dream. Outside the windows, the city dimmed. Buildings blurred into silhouettes, streetlights melted into stars, and roads unraveled like ribbons into nowhere.

No one spoke for a long time. Eventually, I turned to the girl with the photo.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

She didn’t look at me. “Away from what hurts.”

“But what if what hurts is everything?”

She shrugged. “Then we stay on longer.”

I didn’t even tell him to leave. That’s the part I keep circling back to. I just got quiet. Quieter than usual. And he got tired of asking me what was wrong. Then one day, the silence was too loud, and he left.

The man across the aisle glanced at me. Maybe he’d heard me thinking.

“She died,” he said softly. “Four years ago. And I still expect her voice when I unlock the door.”

I nodded. We didn’t need to say much. There’s a language only the heartbroken understand. The space between words. The breath before breaking.

The bus stopped in a field of light. No sign, no station. The doors opened.

The teenage boy stood up, blinking like someone waking from a dream.

He looked at the driver. “Is this…?”

The driver smiled. “It’s not the end. But it’s a place to begin again.”

The boy nodded and stepped off. As the doors closed, he didn’t look back.

Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time didn’t matter on the bus.

“Will it ever stop hurting?” I asked the window.

The driver responded without turning. “Pain doesn’t leave. It transforms.”

“Into what?”

He finally looked at me through the mirror. “Into the reason you keep going.”

Eventually, it was my turn.

We stopped on a quiet street I didn’t recognize. But somehow, I knew it was for me.

The doors opened. A soft wind brushed my cheek like a memory. I stood, hesitated, then turned to the others.

“Thank you.”

No one replied. But I knew they understood.

As I stepped off the bus, the weight in my chest shifted still there, but not crushing. Like a scar instead of a wound. I turned back to wave, but the bus was already gone.

That was three years ago.

Sometimes I still dream of it—fog and silver headlights cutting through sorrow. I walk past Fair view and 10th every so often, usually late at night. I’ve never seen the bus again.

But sometimes, when someone I love is drowning in silence, I sit with them. And I listen.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

Because now I know:

The bus only stops for the heartbroken.

But it only leaves when you're ready to start healing.