If your morning journey looks like a mouth with a thousand teeth
always carry an extra T-shirt in your bag.
People who leave like you do don’t return,
People who leave like this never get there.
This train will swallow you, chew you up and forget to spit you out.
You might spend a night on a stand still,
reduced to dust, feeling nothing.
You don’t own your body anymore;
they can grab on you for balance,
you will grab on someone else too.
The only right we can break bones for
is covering our eyes
when the machine stomps past a man.
Fuel the ride with a heart
that left home
sobbing for little crumbs.
“We are one here”
The heavy erection pressed against your bum,
is now yours.
The large hand dying on your chest,
is now yours.
Your bag that went missing between bodies,
is now someone else’s.
You can die standing
and no one will see your breath leave your body.
We are all trying to get somewhere
with our eyes blind to the rotting.
We buy tickets to wait for trains that derailed.
Turn an empty platform our distination.
Please, teach me how to move.
Busisiwe Mahlangu, born 1996, is a writer, performer and TEDx Speaker from Pretoria, South Africa. She is the author of Surviving Loss and currently studying for a BA in Creative Writing at the University of South Africa.