The City Knows You're Leaving

Illustrated prose-poetry about standing on the precipice of change

Korinne West is an artist and writer from Texas. Growing up on tales of adventure and the power of human connection, she's spent the last decade or so writing her own stories. When not putting pencil to paper or geeking out about some space phenomena, they can be found cuddling their very fluffy cat or drinking copious amounts of tea. You can find her infrequently on Twitter @tealbrigade.

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Transcript:

Your last night in the city, it’s raining—like she couldn’t quite contain the tears over your departure, even as she hides the tops of her skyscrapers under cover of fog. Like if she can’t peer down on you, a tiny speck on the one-way streets, then maybe you’re not really leaving. 

Stripes of light up and down pillars of glass and steel tower around you. The rain is slow and steady, the day’s downpour settled into a lazy rhythm. You’re trying to park your car. It’s a holiday party for work; otherwise you wouldn’t be this far downtown. You don’t normally come out here. You only spend time with the city for special occasions, big milestones, and usually she glitters and glistens for you. Tonight she just offers a somber glow, and she cries. 

Enough with the facades—enough with the charade. You’re here knowing it’s your last night. The city knows too. 

The mist diffuses the night lights, and you feel the wistfulness like a physical weight tied around your heart for safekeeping. You stand on the third-story patio, cold because you left your coat inside, and you breathe deep. Mist and longing fill your lungs along brisk air. You want it to clear your mind, but it only makes this hazier. 

You wonder again if leaving is even the right call. If you’ll even be able to do it. To tear your eyes away from this skyline and point them toward a new horizon far away. To slip out of the city’s grasp, to uncurl the steel streetlight fingers that hold you down in your dreams. 

A city is a city is a city—but it’s different when it’s yours. It’s different when the skyline watched you grow the same way it did, with breaking ground and forcing together metal and fighting to climb higher and higher when all gravity wants is to take you down. It’s different when its newer streets witnessed your first love and the older ones sat underneath your grief. It’s different when the city silhouette is so deeply imprinted on your soul that any other shape feels wrong. 

You're leaving because you feel stuck, and alone, and maybe there’s a glimmer of hope out there in the limitless world. You’re leaving to chase the stars and planets and comets that used to be blotted out by city lights, to reach up into the mist and root around for something new. There's a tug in your gut that you're simultaneously thrilled by and afraid of, and you have to see where it leads.

You can always come back, but coming back to your roots doesn’t change how you ripped them up in the first place. The city won’t forget, even if the carnage gets paved over with fresh asphalt. 

Now, the glasses are empty, the tablecloths swept away. The party is over and the lights are dimming. You say your goodbyes; you walk back to your car. But with the weight of its key heavy in your palm, you take one last look, memorizing the contours of her, and she looks back, memorizing yours. 

The city knows you’re leaving. 

You feel her grip tighten as she asks you, one more time, what it would take for you to stay. 

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