So here we are

So here we are, deep down in the tunnels.

How do people survive in here?

And yet, there is something so human. Crammed together in an existence that we accept as the means to a comfortable or adventurous end, we cling to the hand-rails.

I look at you. Catch your eye. We half-smile.

Not quite, or we break the etiquette.

The doors open and you vanish. Like flesh from the bone.

Just the pickings remain.

The space fills up again.

Now you stand opposite me.

We swing from the roof through the tight turns.

I look at you. I look at everyone. It’s the way I am.

You look at me. Give me a coy smile.

Your skin is dark. Maybe from Pakistan.
Or Bangladesh. Or Wembley.

We smile to each other grimly.

Would you like to know me? I’d like to know you too. But three stops on the doors open and you are gone.

I step aside as the flow passes. It would pass anyway, but I step aside.

The space fills up.

I love your eye-lashes. Are they real?

I’d love to ask you, but I’d cause a panic.

Your hair is really straight. Relaxer.

I look at your parting. But you don’t know.

Should I ask you about your lashes?

Too late. The doors open and you are gone.

In Gordon’s I ordered a Port. Large.

You gave me one and a half – killing off the old bottle.

Messias 10 year old vintage.

Then we struck up a conversation, me and you.

Uninvited.

But we did it anyway.

Relaxed. In that old fashioned way.

Who would begrudge us?

It took me a while to ask. You have an accent?

South African. But you’ve been here since ’98. Lived in Canada before that.

It used to be different in here. In the old days. It’s always the old days, isn’t it?

I nodded.

I liked our conversation. It was real.

We talked about travel. South Africa. My family. Malawi and two birds on a branch.

We shook hands as you left and pledged that one day.

Your replacements were a travesty.

They always are.

One of them was harmless. Perhaps the other, too.

Just pointless and annoying.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like saying that.

But I have to.

It was maybe the other bloke’s fault for asking “Tell me your journey.”

It’s one of those words.

Then I sat and listened to his journey.

It was dull.

High-powered management success – the stuff of dreams. But dull.

I wished you hadn’t left.

They couldn’t find seats. I had the only one, in truth.

Told the dull one he could have it in five minutes (I had to leave for my train).

He said “You can have four.”

I thought “Fuck off”. But I didn’t say anything.

I stayed fifteen. Listened to how his daughter was at Edinburgh. Time to leave.

The Port was good and I wished I’d said so to the barman with the beard.

I don’t mind it here.

I don’t mind it anywhere.