NYC

I have fallen in love in many places. Or perhaps, more accurately, with many places. That was the
intoxication. The surroundings, the soul of the city we were in, not the person with me in the we. I
get caught up and carried along in the romance of these worlds that are so far from my own. They
feed me their finest food, their music, their art. They show me their hidden pockets of life and
sweep me away with the promise that living here is so easy. Catch me in their arms; look at the
twinkling lights! And whisper on the winds that they are the prettiest city, and this is the prettiest
boy, and play my heart like so many others, like his, and let us fall into each other because we are
high on the pulse of the city life and mistake it for… mistake it for? Lust? Love? Loneliness?

But all pale in comparison, because who could ever compare, to New York City in the height of its
summer. Sticky skin and sunkissed shoulders, and legs worn and aching. Rooftop bars and “Look at
that view!”.

Chaos and noise, a heaving, throbbing heartbeat of madness and neon and you.
You, the New York City of my life. Messy and wild. Unpredictable, unattainable, tumultuous, and
solid. How can anything compare?

Crowded bars and loud music. Shouted conversations and drinks orders and the lingering burn of a
free poured bourbon cocktail. Secret looks and knowing glances between them, wilfully ignored. I
lean against you and you are there, my foundations, and it all melts away until you are all that I am
aware of and your touch is stronger than all the bourbon in the world and I am hooked. I move and
the absence kicks in and how can anyone compare?

I spy in the middle of the city, e for everything you could ever want. The faint tang of mustard, street
vendor cries. The blur of lights from traffic and twenty foot signs, a life moving quickly as we stand
still. Eight million souls, living, breathing, falling.

You are too entwined in all that I am. You were there for all that I went through, a silent witness. You
were all I went through and there is too much for it to ever be a clean break from the maybes in my
mind. I cling onto you, and I don’t want to I promise, but I cannot stop. I am hooked and I can’t give
you up. We both know I’ve tried. I know I’ve tried. That hurt too. So this is what I’m left with because
I would rather have you, in any form, than not have you at all. A snow globe of the city sitting on a
shelf, not a life lived in it. But this hurts too, just differently.

Trees fracture the sunlight, strolling through the lungs of the city. I have seen it frozen and lonely,
but this is how it should be. Very much alive. I break from the shadows, the sun pouring over me,
heat creeping back in. It dances on the water throwing rainbow reflections. Everything is different
but nothing has changed.

I have loved others. I have, I do, I am. There is an undercurrent, always. You creep back in and wash
over all that is until I cut you out again. But it’s always too late because you’ve marked your path
through my veins. One shot of you and my heart is hungover for longer every time.

Muffled beats from every street create the bassline to a symphony as the sun goes down. Under a
veil of night, it all lights up. I held your hand to get through the dark, a tunnel between two cities,
and it fit as it always had, as if yours was the hand it was always meant to hold and suddenly the
dark didn’t seem so scary because having to let go of you at the end seemed so much worse. We
look from the other side, all is hushed but the sound of the water. Isn’t it beautiful?

I have memorised you, your face, your hands, how you move. Adjusted the carved pictures in my
mind as the years changed you. Defiant and strong, I close my eyes and you are as clear and proud
as the Manhattan skyline and I have no reason and no right.

I can’t do it for much longer. I need you gone and I will never let you go. How could anyone compare?

By Hazel O’Rourke