a mother sits on her phone instead of talking to her four-year-old son.

I’m very hungry.

This is a table.

Is this a fast train?

Why is not moving?

It’s moving.

Why are we not eating if this is a table?

 

A mother sits on her phone instead of talking to her four-year-old son. I catch the little boy’s eye and he looks fed-up. Like he has a question he wants to ask, one he knows won’t be answered. Outside the train, through the window, blurred world in all it’s unfamiliar shapes and colours, sunlight flickering violently on graves, this is answer enough for the little boy. Mother on her phone, a little boy’s gaze out of a train’s window: are they so dissimilar?

When Mummy puts down her phone he knows it’s okay to talk. In silence, there is curiousity. She looks at her phone when it dings. He wriggles in his chair, changes seats. Are these independent, individual actions, the checking of the phone, the changing of the seat, any different?

He stares so I smile and he stares. What does he think of me? Nothing. He thinks nothing of me. I am a stranger.

 

Unhappy, un-stimulated child,

be encouraged in your wonder,

It’s London, and you are not a

Londoner.