I stumble from the rain-soaked platform to the small parcel by the name of the “red line”.”

“Red line,” a description so intimidating, like a wrong answer isolated from the rest on an exam.

“So intimidating,” I thought, the metallic taste of the words in my mouth intrigued me.

However, I was not isolated from the rest.

I was not special, I was just a part of the crowd. 

I WAS the crowd, a stranger to every strange-looking-stranger who passed by with their fancy suit and briefcase.

I was a sixteen year old girl, strikingly unremarkable. 

I stepped onto the train. Should I sit or stand? 

Standing means I might fall when the train comes to a halt, embarrassing myself. 

Sitting means I might have to sit next to someone. 

I hesitate, grabbing a seat next to an older-looking woman.

Another woman sits by my side, I feel our shoulders touch and the heat of our bodies transferring to and from one another. So intimate, so strange.

They all exist so seemingly unalarmed, why were they so unalarmed?

They did not care to look around.

Their smug looking faces remained in a permanent frown. 

So unaware, like robots crowded into a vessel. 

I was so alone yet so unbothered, the perfect place for me..

I struggle to put in earbuds as the frequent stops of the train jolt my body.

I close my eyes and breathe.

A feeling of warmness flushes my stomach and I feel no desire to resist.

It’s hard to explain, really.

The strange familiar feeling of nostalgia for somewhere you've never been, reminiscent upon the nonexistent. 

I was somewhere, in that train, yet I was nowhere at all.

A midpoint between two destinations, with little appreciation from its bystanders.

A train was not a “place” to them, I knew it wasn’t.

The ride was just a mere burden, an unappreciated necessity.

I turn up the volume, sit back. I bask in this feeling, the opportunity to blend in.

Oh, the pleasure of being alone in a crowd.

The pleasure of the aura of the train.