I usually write about autumn in October but this year, even though autumn is finally here, in the difference in the air itself, in the wetness of the air, in the russet twilight, I won’t write about it. Things are changing. I can’t spend my life looking back. Always staring into myself like Narcissus into a lake, although actively listening for Echo, re-working things that float around in my own head, taking twigs of experience and twisting them into some kind of wicker metaphor for something that could be universal. I should write a story about what is going to happen, or what is happening right now in this moment, unravelling at the speed of an eye over text. That’s what I should write. Even using ‘should’ begins to play into the past tense, but maybe doubt is the mood of the present tense, maybe ‘am’ has embiggened its role in our tensual state. No, I think I’m wrong. ‘Should’ is the moment before the present. But what can you say about the present? I am writing this. I am writing this to you. You are reading this. You are thinking, what will happen at the end of this sentence? Or maybe I am thinking that and in thinking that I reach the end of the sentence. Become the moment between the present and the future. Where are some characters to accompany us together riding this to the end, we’re both here, but is there anyone else?

There’s a man, sitting in a train seat, looking into a big phone, the kind that have almost given up the pretence of being a phone, are really just pocket computers. Next to him stand a row of commuters, at least four in the space that should accommodate two at most. They are staring down into his pocket computer as well. Light from it illuminates his face, flickering across his nose, his lips. When I stare at someone this long I think I could fall in love with them. I’m standing too, pressed up leg and hip against another person, standing all the way into London where I work.

In the summer this journey is made in daylight (another indication that autumn is here). Maybe that’s the thing I like about autumn, how mutable it is. You can feel yourself moving towards something. It’s an imminent season. But I’m not writing about autumn, I’m writing about how we, the standers, have a formed a kinship: all of us looking down on the seated man. If someone gets off at the next stop I’ll be able to move up and get a better look at what he’s watching.

The train pulls into the next station. Someone shouts, ‘Move down’. Of course we don’t move, us the group of watchers. We are tight enough already. However despite the perfect seal between our slotted bodies there is an undulation. A wave caused by, I suppose, a scuffle somewhere beyond my range of vision. My group, we watchers, draw our shoulders together. We won’t get involved. But then – as the train shudders – the man gets up from his seat, reaches above to the luggage rack to fetch his bag. He puts away the pocket computer in a zip on the bag. How I hate the bag. Our bonds dissolve. Some of us look into each other’s eyes by accident. I didn’t even get to see what he was watching.

Cruelly, the man tries to leave his seat. He apologises as we have to make ourselves concave for him to pass. He leaves, perhaps the train, I assume the train, I can’t see the doors. As I crane to look for his exit, one of my former watcher brethren/sistren takes the seat. He/she flicks open the newspaper that had been kicked under the seat. We reconvene to read along.