Die in the Night of London

My eyes were heavy, being difficult in my desire to remain cognizant of my surroundings while I wandered a city that had only just welcomed me with a familiar feel.

I walked across brick streets and passed the sparkle of theater marquees that shine on the cobblestones below my feet. The city lived long before all of the things that are in it now, ever came as a thought, and now it's thriving on the idea that the way it was once done was the proper way to do them.

Things that made me distrust my vision, like the Abbey of Westminster; a horrifyingly daunting building. It bore down on me and choked my soul. I stood astounded, and afraid, as the jagged edges of a memorial to centuries ago glowed in a spotlight, drenched in the darkness of an early January's clear night. You could feel that structure on your heart. As a Canadian, the macabre only grew upon the realization that I now stood at the front door to a building that was raised nearly a thousand years before my country was even born.

So cultured, you hear us speak of our city, of this country. Yet it is factually inaccurate. Somber to become lost in the thought that more of what's around you is larger than what you truly believe to have existed.

Simplified, my nights in London died in the arms of an origin I'd never quite understand.

Art and centuries of blood, lust, exploration and determination oozed through the lanes and the underground. Quickly, I became enamored by it all, gleefully swallowed by the symmetry of the cemetery I was strolling through.

The cathedral, wearing cloaks made from the night's black, loomed above my crown as I held my breath out of respect, or fear, or both.

Every moment was like a dream, like a nightmare. I'd woken up somewhere I'd never been and wasn't soon to find myself desiring a departure.

She assaulted me, shook me. There in the streets. This ... place, she took my hand, told me she loved to read. Told me she'd rather be in a quiet corner, injecting creation shadily on the bed of cement gutters. Those alleyways your home, and I'd love to move in.

You're my kind of town. My kind of endless horror. The exact taste I was looking for.

Be Diana, in the depth of a brandy glass, and wish yourself somewhere silent.

wf.