The City Is Leaving Me

Reluctantly, the city draws itself out from behind a cloud, waiting to see what I have to offer.  I have little but it’s heartfelt.  I talk about the early days.  I string together a pile of anecdotes regarding natural phenomena, part-time courses, old concerts.  We laugh a little and the city puts its sun in my eyes.

We are not in love, the city says; this is a gradually changing nation and I do not want to be left behind.

I do not want to be left behind, I say to the city.  But the city produces a list of all the budget flights I have taken, copies of boarding cards floating past on the wind.  I tell the city that those flights were to help me develop; so that I could return to the city as a better person, be someone the city would be happy to have inside.  The city says we cannot be together after we have spent so long apart, and takes me to a new district in the Northern Quarter to show me all the new people it has had move in.

I cry a little and the city turns on its lights.

The city talks about all the other cities I have visited.  It takes me to the Cornerhouse to watch something serious and, as the lights dim and an advertisement for independent cinema flicks past offering a fast-moving line of city names, the city (my city) nudges me in the ribs and says, what about those?

I tell my city that it isn’t the same; that, if it isn’t the Irwell, a river means nothing.  I tell the city that there are only seven train stations that feel like home.  The city reminds me that I once said I loved Budapest, and tells me it has closed Central Library for three years.  I storm off and the city laughs at my attempt at thunder.

I am standing at a bus stop on Portland Street and imagining all the things the city is learning in the cinema without me.  I am wondering who is sitting in its seats and wiping their feet on the street outside the door.  I am clutching the tiny black speck from the the cover of the road atlas that I now keep in my wallet.  I am holding it in my hand and trying to turn it into something more.

I am standing at a bus stop on Portland Street and the city’s face is everywhere.  I can see the lines of its streets in the bus shelter window; small detailed sections behind glass, covered with numbers and arrows explaining how it all works.  And, at the end of the shelter, all back-lit and accurate, a large coloured diagram of the city’s head, resembling some geometric dinosaur.  I stare and I stare at the map, at the eye above St Peter’s Square, at the Shudehill-shaped ear.  I try to remember this face because it is getting late and the city is not mine anymore.

I look closer.  I find Portland Street.  And, over it, a small black dot that says, You Are Not Here.

Lydia Unsworth is the Manchester winner of Creative Tourist’s Rain Never Stops Play competition. She blogs at gettingoverthemoon.blogspot.com

Pages: 1 2 3