Mr. Speaker — On the Bus, in public, music at Full Volume

Lyrics

Morning. The seven-oh-four express. 
Everyone's got the code memorized. 
Eyes down. 
Don't engage. 
The quiet hum.

Then there's him. Seat 4C. 
The phone comes out, a black mirror. 
The thumb, a predator, flicks and flicks. 
And then it happens. 
The whole bus flinches. 
A woman reading *The Lincoln Highway* looks up over her glasses. 
A man in a suit tightens his grip on his briefcase. 
A silent, collective wince.

Hey! Mr. Speaker! Did you not get the memo?
This isn't your basement. This isn't your private theater. 
This is our bus, our morning, our fragile truce with the world. 
And that sound, that tiny, shrieking digital ghost you've unleashed? 
It's a declaration of war.

Now it's a dance challenge. 
Now it's a guy explaining crypto. 
Now it's a laugh track from 1992. 
The audio bleeds. It stains the air. 
Tinny. Compressed. 
A mosquito made of ones and zeroes, right in the ear of God and everyone on the A-line. 
We're all looking at each other. 
The universal language of "Are you hearing this?" spoken with only eyebrows.

Hey! Mr. Speaker! Did you not get the memo?
This isn't your basement. This isn't your private theater. 
This is our bus, our morning, our fragile truce with the world. 
And that sound, that tiny, shrieking digital ghost you've unleashed? 
It's a declaration of war.

I wonder if you even know. 
Or if you know, and this is the point. 
A small violence. A little broadcast of the self. 
Proof that your world is louder than ours. 
Nathaniel Baldwin is spinning in his grave. 
He gave us a gift. A private world. 
And you threw it back in his face for a 12-second video of a cat falling off a table.

And just like that, he's gone. 
He steps onto the curb at Elm and Third, the sound fading as he walks away. 
The silence rushes back in. 
It feels… heavy. 
We all take a breath. We look at our shoes. 
The quiet hum is back. But it's different. 
Tomorrow, he'll be back. He's always back.