If only for a moment, you were the brightest star in the sky: the energetic boy with bouncing curls headbanging along to inaudible tunes; the sophisticated man with the immaculate salt and pepper beard, staring wistfully out of the cloudy window; the chubby girl with multicoloured locks smiling at her phone like no one is watching. 

The implication of your eternal absence when you leave your seat creates a temporary vacuum in the space of my heart. Because every hot summer day, every cold winter night, I fall in love -just a little bit- with the strangers on the bus.