Cold rain pelting on my skin,
city lights reflected in the wet black tar of
a road almost too narrow for the cars racing by -
all this I saw last when you were standing by my side,
feeling the nighttime city live and breathe around us
as we watched people scurry by and call for taxis in the cold.
It has never felt lonely to me before, I never saw
how isolated you are in a city when you're standing in its heart,
watching the blood pump through veins around you
and yet not moving, stagnancy amidst torrents.
A neon light flickers across the street from me
and I am ripped out of my dream to realise
you are not with me this time.
I see you in every street lamp;
around every corner I expect to see your face
to face only myself in the mirror of a dark shop window.
My face looks unexpectedly hollow,
my shape unfamiliar without you next to it,
and I wonder when my life became about you.
I do not belong here, into this city where
lights gleam bright even in the darkest hours
and sirens scream agony all night long.
I am from a different world, one where
dogs run free across wide fields and along rivers
and the air smells of fresh-cut grass in spring.
I am from a world where nobody locks their door
and stone-and-wood houses are made to live in,
not concrete boxes where numbers rule lives.  
All this was once foreign to me, and is again;
I do not belong with the neon lights and cinemas,
the glass facades and cold black tar,
I do not belong with the flashing ads and loud sirens,
the people who don't smile as they walk by.
All these things remind me of you.
I was one of them, one of the souls that made up this city
but I cannot live in it when you are not here.
I do not belong here anymore,
among the thousand lights that remind me of your eyes
and the constant noise that sounds like your breath.
All this reminds me too much of you.