Way to Work

Two eastern-european gypsy women go down into the tube.

On the bus just before they were talking to each other across the aisle, the language deep and gutteral, lots of 'boi' sounds. At one point a spital hit my cheek, I wipe it away without her noticing. The one sitting inside of me talks the most. She has brown skin. All but her front incisors are capped with some very red-gold, its either very red gold or it looks coppery. At Manor House they get off. They are wearing long very full skirts which were last fashionable in Victorian times. Odd to see such fashions, or maybe they are just clothes, rather than fashions. One has a baby in a buggy. They look like those women who beg on the tube, a baby in their lap, an outstretched palm and pleading eyes that burn intensly from their faces. Eyes that seem to have seen too much.

These women disappear down into the tube entrance, carrying the buggy between them. Perhaps to beg all day on the tube. Perhaps to travel somewhere. Who knows.