Metro stream-of-consciousness

Overcrowded metro. The tunnel is full of yellow light, sleepy fog and a slight deem of dust slipping in the air. The smell of dampness spreads across every piece of space. I love this viscous smell. It returns me to the comfort of my grandma's basement, the underground parking lot I used to go to every morning before school, and the sweet smell of the Rome metro. I take another deep breath, filling my lungs thoroughly with this aroma. I want the smoke and dust to cover my lungs entirely. It feels like I'll never get enough of this scent, never quench my thirst. I hear the noise around me, a white, all-encompassing noise. The sweet overcrowdedness of sounds, rustlings. And I drown in this sound, trying to catch every single one. The dry coughing of people on the platform, the squeak of wheels on the rails, the humming of the escalator, the whistle and howling of the wind that breaks through the metro tunnels and rushes deep into the darkness. I listen attentively and immerse myself in each sound, deeper and deeper. Perhaps this noise will drown out my thoughts, like diving underwater. It plugs my ears, and so does the stream of thoughts. An endless stream of thoughts and only noise, white noise. I'm tired of it. I put on headphones, and the sounds fade away. Here's my train. I enter and wearily approach an empty burgundy velour seat. The train moves. The darkness of tunnel walls rushes past me, interrupted by advertising signs. Bright, neon, flashy, they attract, they repel. My head starts spinning even more, travelling against the train's direction, contemplating the cheap lights of advertising. People. People around in a half-dream. As if shrouded in fog, I see their clothing, cuffs, hands. But I don't see faces, only the outlines of dry skin wrinkles, and that's how I understand who's standing in front of me. Through the whiteness of their velvet fingers, along the delicate lines of palms and the barely visible veins on their hands. Black, grey, brown, and only occasionally red or blue, they all blend into strokes. Pale, dreary, and grey, sometimes breaking with a small bright obstacle, and I'm lost again in an enormous stroke of dust. People blend into one spot, a large mass of greyness, so I try my hardest to focus on the bright spots, remember the bright spots, catch the bright spots, and feel only the bright spots. I am blinded, sinking quietly into the abyss of a burning migraine. Claws crawl along my stomach walls, barely noticeable as they glide, leaving a nauseating feeling of emptiness and simultaneous saturation. Just like butterflies trapped inside the drum of a washing machine. I am nothing. I am everything; there's so much emptiness within me and too much to contain in my body. I am bigger than my body, bigger than my bones. I feel pain in the solar plexus, as if a pair of boots are breaking through my chest. I feel the walls of my throat tightening, as if I swallowed a gulp of salty seawater. The walls of my throat rub against each other, making it harder to breath. I feel a burning sensation in my chest, a heaviness. It's as if there's a gaping black hole within me, and it can't be satisfied, it can't be filled. I'm in water, cold and chilling. I'm in a vortex, pulled towards the bottom. The claws fade, and the lights recede. Spots turn into outlines, and the vortex disperses smoothly across the water. The sound of a signal wrenches me from the sea of white noise, and I am awakened from a half-dream. Shifting my sleepy gaze from the display to the platform, I step off my train to be greeted by a new, dazzling white light. And once again, I search within it for bright spots, hoping they will anchor me and not let me shatter.