train

I only feel like I belong to the city when I’m on the train. An anonymous figure perfectly slotting into the puzzle crafted by thousands of other commuters. Amongst all of the suits, downturned heads staring at phones, you can animate and formulate makeshift lives, so suddenly clothes jump to life and become occupied by bodies again. In these moments I exist a thousand times over: I am first the girl, then the teenager, then just another stranger, springing from mind to mind as a fleeting figure, nothing but a shadow awaiting density.

I keep catching my reflection in the glass- see my eyes floating in the brown and gruelling Thames. When I turn my face to the side, it changes, the cheeks elongate, straight on; the nose goes squat. Tilted upwards the chin plummets down.

At 6.42 I have caught the cusp of rush hour. With each stop, the crowd ebbs and flows, until finally thinning out and revealing the chest of the train so that I can look both up and down the body both ways. I am eaten alive, just bait trapped between the ribs of this mechanical creature.

I don't want to be found.