Metro shorts - 2

I lumber into the train and hasten to the corner seat automatically, the only place where I can lean my head and doze off at the end of a long day at work. People slowly traipse in and I watch the compartment fill up through the ever-narrowing opening of my sleepy eyes. Three out of the four seats in the square on my left are taken up by a family. Diagonally across me sits the father, who looks young, cradling a boy with large liquid eyes and spring-like hair. The mother sits across the two of them, exhausted and listless. I close my eyes as the train pushes off in its usual cacophony of bells and screeching.

A cackle of laughter wakes me out of my slumber. I open my eyes drowsily, slightly irritated at this unwelcome intrusion. The man across me is rocking his son from side to side, dipping him really low and mock-threatening to drop him in an alien African tongue. His black arms gleam in the white neon lights of the metro, and his face is beaming with fatherly joy. The boy flails his tiny brown feet as he shakes with a peculiar mix of childlike fear and roaring amusement. When his body arches towards me, his saucer-like eyes catch mine for a brief instant before his father pulls him back up again. Like all infants, he has his fingers in his mouth, and he gives me a big, drippy smile. It’s goofy enough to make me grin, and I close my eyes again, letting the father-son’s giggling mingle with the sounds of the train and rhythm the rest of my journey home.