Under-the-ground commuter

I'm a commuter.

I move in step with the person in front of me.

I walk up the stairs bending my leg when I see the person in front of me bend theirs. I take their cue to lift my trousered leg up. I am a commuter. The people I touch I will never see again, women in all their beauty stand within a hair's breadth and I look through them, they are ghosts like me. We are not here but stowed away somewhere in our thoughts.

Reality does not help here under the ground.

I have a mask that fits the bill and does the job of covering my scream. It is flat and its polythene expression has a flat seam that rubs on the inside of my emotions like a badly made shoe.

I am searching for distraction, filled with the need to consume, like a gumball machine I have been twisted and I spit out treats to those who love me and I love.

I have a soul but it is within four walls in croydon kept there by crayfish guards that will not let you pass unless you have my permission or they are bribed by gold fish food. Can muslims eat crayfish? the chat rooms are full of rumor and I cant find a definitive answer. Well these crayfish are ten foot tall and have golden claws. They are a national treasure and eating them would be a crime because they are a national treasure and will not let me down.

So why do I hide my soul? Because of the danger of exposure to the world of course, because of the last time.

She didn't doubt I loved her it was not about love it was about compatibility it was about: cornish pasties and corned beef, salad cream and tomato sauce, socks and iceburg lettuces, fantasy novels and TV; verses: skin, smell, looks, sweat, the way I gripped the sheets, the hand, the hair, the eyes, the eye, the humor, the warmth the company the laughter and the forgetting.

Pulled in different directions at equal force and in the end … well I am a commuter now parting ways with everyone at every stop.

I like this world it is close but has no meaning the contact with others is unmeant and unmet. A biological father gets on with his biological son, going to private school, his back is straight and his son is to young to realize but he mimics his dad, long live the sharp elbowed middle class. Slowly moving towards their death in an orderly fashion, moving in step with the person in front.