Six of them, packed into a corridor that smells of hairspray and spilled sugar, and every single one is annoyed.
I could weep at the luxury of it. The one at the front shifts foot to foot, jaw clenched, and does not know she is a marvel: a whole warm body holding its own weight, feeling the too-hot press of strangers, the thud of the bass coming up through the soles of her shoes and into her teeth. She would give anything to be somewhere else. I would give anything to be exactly here.
Two of them have found each other. One is fixing the other's smudged eye in the wavering light, thumb under the lash line, both of them laughing at nothing, foreheads almost touching. Skin on skin. They do it without a thought, the way I used to lean into people, the way you only notice you have stopped doing once you cannot anymore.
A girl passes a lipstick to a stranger. A stranger holds a stranger's drink. There is more tenderness in this ugly little hallway than any of them will remember tomorrow.
The queue does not move and they all sigh, checking their glowing rectangles, wishing the minutes away. Oh, don't. Please don't wish them anywhere. The sticky floor, the flickering bulb, the friend saying you look amazing, no really, the small eternity of waiting your turn while the whole loud golden night hums on the other side of the door.
Stay a moment longer, all of you. Be bored here together, warm and impatient and alive.
I hope the line stays long.
I hope you never know how lucky you are to hate it.