How my heart has to travel
Packed in to full capacity, arms legs tangle like wires. Bars are clung to where men hang like meat. Women fly for seats but stand in pinching heels as too-large people pour themselves like thick custard into window tables.
I stand my ground, a size 3 and a half piece of area, no bigger than the lid for the tin of a cake. I position myself nearest the door for an early escape. At the next station, a school line of children wait to board, sweetly lined up with beaming soft and crummy faces, hair brushed by their mothers only to disobediently spring back wayward.
As their teacher prepares them to board, the puzzle of jaded sweaty people hemmed in by the doors, do not budge. The wall ignores. Laptops stay tapping of late night conferences, retirement plans and interviews, diets, targets and loud iPods blare out of unclean ears, whilst eyes cast over UCAS application forms, tesco favorite delivery slots, secret Pinterest boards and people with dirty news on their hands; don't motion to move.
“UuuuuuOOOOoooooouuuoooooww” Cried the skinny, short, fat and fuzzy kids. The line of sweet children who cannot board are sullen with disappointment, “It’s ok children, we’ll make the theatre show” she ebulliently reassures. She the teacher, neatly keeping them from revolting, snot dripping, laces tripping, nose picking.
I’m sure that a dozen of us full sized people would have done anything to trade places with those children, but the constraints on adulthood kept us silently on board.