By Calla Smith
The city is a cruel lover. It took me years of pounding my feet against the concrete for me to ever feel that I belonged. But once it took me in, it gave me glimpses of something beautiful. The streetlights looked like diamonds in the velvet night sky. The cobblestone alleys exploded with life and laughter under a warm summer moon. When I had nowhere else to go, the city took me under its wing.
I wasn’t at home in the shared apartment I lived in, but once I was outside, I was lulled by the hum of machines and humanity around me like a lullaby, and I trusted the neon signs more than anyone I had ever known.
The city loved me just enough for me to give myself to it, offering up my sweat and tears and blood as the only kind of sacrifice I had. But just when I thought I had my feet under me and I was finally moving to a place I could call my own, the bad days started.
Suddenly, I was lost on a sidewalk I had been down too many times to count, where I had once felt every crack and loose tile in the depths of my soul. I didn’t know where to turn to find the familiar subway station, or which corner my favorite lunch spot had been on. Before, I had found myself in the city. For the first time in my life, I had a clear picture of who I was and where I was going. But now I was lost in the same landscape that I had etched into my heart.
The coffee shops I had once frequented were all closed. Every time I left my house, there was a shadow of violence in the half-heard conversations of the people around me that often erupted into screaming matches. The people asking for money or food on the subway started to turn on the indifferent crowd and yell profanities before getting off at the next station. The gentle sound of the train in the distance that had once soothed me was suddenly lost in all the honking horns and blaring sirens.
The city was determined to never give me even a second of peace, and I longed for the favor and fickle love of my one true confidant. The sight of my favorite flowers blooming bright in the avenues sent me to tears, and I cried in the silence of my apartment. I thought about writing a love letter to bring back the place I once knew. I imagined myself covering the bus stops and subway stations with rose petals as an apology for something I didn’t know I had done wrong.
I just needed a home and a sympathetic ear to hear my troubles and cut through the heavy, heartbreaking silence with a burst of laughter or a few snatches of a familiar song.
I knew that if I made it out of this confusing maze I was lost in, I could find the exact spot where I had felt the invisible arms reach out to hold me close when I was most alone, but the twisting avenues only showed me the trash drifting by on the wind and the harsh slash of cars going too fast. Dogs with matted hair roamed the night like hunters, coming closer as they watched my broken heart infect everything I had once loved. They could feel the will to survive seeping out of my bones, and they circled, waiting to see if I would be their next meal.
I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to fend them off, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. Without the place that had come to define me, I didn’t want to be anything anymore. It didn’t matter if I lived or died out in that unfamiliar wasteland. Every second of survival just extended my agony.