City

My morning commute isn’t like your morning commute. Mine is your slurred train ride home. My work day finishes at the last bell and its toll shows its toll on you. I am the sober gatekeeper of fun, the devil on the shoulder, the voice of reason.

I walk the streets with you night creatures but I am not one of you. I am the camouflaged cameraman in the forest, a detached documentarian.

Because the city changes at night. In many ways night turns back the clocks. Cash is king again, vegans become carnivores and eloquence incoherence. It’s when the city feels most connected to its past - belching out drunken fools who stumble home or look for a fight or worse and the roads’ domed drainage proves itself useful once more.

Nothing’s changed, really.

You scale the horizontal pavements like a dinghy at sea, convincing yourself that the tree that tripped you wasn’t there last week and the city watches you struggle with glee.

I sit on the last train with you but you don’t see me. I stare out the window into the dimmed apartments but they don’t see me either. I am the fluorescent unseen, an unpaying subscriber to the fleeting pane of your life.

The train smells of chips and sadness, the city’s eau de toilette. What started the day as fresh and ironed suits are now wrinkled with injury-prone dancing and regret. You bring your phone closer then further then closer again to make sure the half an hour max text has no mistakes in it. The city lights blink on and off outside, waving its relieved good riddance, another night survived of you. There’s a fight in the next carriage over someone looking at them the wrong way. It’s 12:52am and 1252 AD on the train. Men puff their chests but their beer bellies dampen the impact. Tensions rise, chips get cold, someone cries softly into their hand.

And so it’s been for a thousand years. The city endures us but it is tired. It creaks and groans with the weight of us. We fill it with our junk and our sins. Our past and future crammed together, on top of each other, smothering and smoky. The city cannot hold us much longer. Soon the veins will clog and burst and it will breathe its last sigh of relief.

I get home and the sun is rising as I shut the curtains. Another day in the city begins.

Oli is an aspiring writer who runs a bar in London and writes when not running it.