Pankrác (Prague Metro)

One who knows from the doctor for a certainty it is their last year alive, gazes at everyone and everything with a wonder they cannot express. The man in black could be a priest, a professor, or a secret service agent. A woman is sharpening a knife in her mind. A lonely man in his fifth day of mediation is losing interest in dissembling. While behind him on the down escalator is the shop assistant who has been doing this for too long and should go back to study, or anything, really, other than this stuff, down. Someone else carries the burden of being thought of as just someone else. They go down every Monday and Tuesday to catch the train at Pankrác Metro. The student carries in his head all the confusions that cannot reach a page of his essay. The young man with the downloads of European electronica  in his ears refuses to catch anyone’s eye. The middle man who has replaced his consumption of women with consumption of Pilsner Urquell, waits immobile for the amber state to pass. A woman of independent demeanour is, you would never think it, about to explode any minute with pent-up fury. Every Tuesday and Wednesday they are on the escalator to Pankrác, in English Pancras, after nearby Saint Pancras Church. He misses someone so much that the escalator could be a cloud, a flying carpet. The beauty descends, who may be going to see her new boyfriend or may be going to see the ex or may be just going, somewhere, else. Every Wednesday and Thursday they find themselves again on the platform of Pankrác Metro, Pankrác being where the Pankrác Remand Centre is found, Pankrác being Prague slang for a prison. The woman is beyond caring now the moment of loss has arrived full force. While that man over there is the same difficult individual he was when he was a teenager. Every Thursday and Friday, Pankrác again, Saint Pancras Station, streamlined, neutral; or else a joke prison, a place they share as they stand in line first thing in the morning. The man with too much computer in his fibres is numbly staring at the tracks. The woman with time on her hands lets time fix her hair and paint her lips in a tiny mirror.  The child with her grandmother could solve this knot with a simple twist. In her bag the lifetime resident keeps a packet of of headache tablets and a safety weapon. The man in his newspaper is in the world where chancellors berate and climate change argues, until the red and silver train comes in at his feet. The woman with tactics always finds a window by standing on the same platform tiles where the door opens. A man is wondering how he got into such a stupid argument last night and regrets it all, until next week.