My way home from work

The shop up the road from work. Half barber’s, half Spanish video rental. One side of the shop window exposes sleek chairs and shiny floor. In the other, a counter, lines of pictures, fading posters for films. ‘Hasta nos que separe’.  I have never seen anyone go in, either to rent a film, or get a haircut.

The man who sells the Evening Standard by the tube station. He doesn’t shout, but stands by his stall, holding himself alert and slightly separate. His steady, cynical gaze. His fist grasps a handful of change. The way he looked at me, his eyes light with surprise, when I tried smiling at him one day.

The way that the hair on my fringe lifts slightly when an oncoming tube is approaching. Even before the sign has changed to ‘train approaching, please stand back’, if you stand with your face angled towards the tunnel, you can feel the faint kiss of the air on your cheek and you know when it’s coming.

On the underground map, the station you are actually at is rubbed at, the shiny surface obscured by jutting fingerprints. “Where am I?” “We’re there.” “Where?” “There.” Pointing. “There.”

My underground line emerges into the open air, snaking through

East London like a line of mercury. I am never sure where it emerges. I am always reading. I imagine that it is like the entrance to a badger set, or a rabbit warren. I imagine that at this point, the line is tilting upwards, the front carriage with the driver in beating against the earth, scrabbling through roots, before bursting out into the grey light. 

Lights set into the pavement outside the station. Like portholes into a subterranean world. My feet stepping over them, and never knowing the aching emptiness below, the sudden drop of a hoarse echo, falling like a stone.

My front door. The way that the air changes as I step over the threshold and close it behind me with a secure click. Outside, inside. Cold, warm. The grit of brickwork, then the ‘mellow sage’ green walls of the hall. The street, my home. Each separated by just a few centimetres of space, two worlds so close, but so far apart in meaning, as similar and yet as hatefully different as sisters, both locked together by my key. On my way, finally home.