Don't Stand So

close to me! It's one of those spilky days when everyone is in my way. They aren't really, but that's the way it feels when someone is going slowly on the sidewalk and I can't get around them. Or I can hear all the boring details of someone's grocery list that they feel like shouting into their cellphone while I'm waiting for the light to change at the streetcorner. Click-click someone's heels on pavement following my every step for two blocks. That guy that has a whole platform to stand on but chooses to breathe down my neck. And on MUNI, someone's bag is sticking into my butt, someone's elbow on my clavicle, there is an arm no less than two inches from my face and it's not mine, just someone trying to hold on.

And trying to get off MUNI is like burrowing through a tunnel of people, it's like diving underwater and I can't breathe as I fight for a slot on the stairway, assert my right to exit, ascend the escalator weaving around all those who don't yet get that you stand on the right and climb on the left, until I come up for sweet, siren-filled air of church & market. The cars rushing by as I try and hit my stride, my own little game of frogger, to find my way home.