building walls

M said her goodbyes there, under the eastern sky in a night that was cold and so black it drowned out the stars. there was just the coldness and the darkness and the old, crumbling face of the city around them, witnessing something completely insignificant to it. and in all honesty, why would the city have cared? why should it have? the black eyes of the buildings hovering above her and K had seen wars, after all,  had seen the rise and the fall of an empire; the same facades that were now surrounding them had witnessed how people had been dragged from their homes to a place they would never return and then silently watched how time had eaten away the blood stains on the pavement under M and K's feet.

so the city most certainly didn't care; but M did, more than she had expected to, and she hoped K cared as well. 

it had been her own decision to leave the city, for good this time,  and K had supported her choice all the way. but now, as the moment of the inevitable and most likely permanent departure was approaching with a nauseating speed, she saw how her own uncertainty over the rightness of her decision flickered in K's eyes as well. it was odd, really, how seeing her own fear in the eyes of another brought back the memory of everything that had brought them into this point. 

how, at first, K had been just another stranger M came across every now and then due to the same social circles they shared; and how, slowly, they had got into chatting, and spending time together and making each other laugh with the most unexpected and often quite incomprehensible jokes. how they had spent more and more time together, drinking the night away in the shabby bars of the city or taking walks by the water that was as black and deep as the night was now, or drinking tea in the messy kitchen of M's apartment long after her flatmates had gone to sleep. M didn't know exactly when it had happened, or how, but suddenly K had turned into the person she called first; the person who was a part of her every single day, of her whole existence, in a way so natural that she never gave it a second thought. 

until now, of course. because of course she loved K, and of course she had been aware of it, but until now love had been something you said without thinking about it too much, without it meaning much anything at all. until now when it wasn't anymore, when it suddenly meant absolutely everything, and M couldn't for the life of her understand how it was even possible she hadn't figured this out before. because she did love K, really love, or at least could have loved; but now it was too late for what-ifs because the plane was leaving and the ocean between now and tomorrow was wider than their promises to keep in touch.

and maybe it was the tightness of K's embrace around her, or maybe it was the coldness of the night, or the lack of stars in the black sky or even the mute walls around them. maybe it was the rush of some kind of desperation that surged from somewhere beyond reason, or the fact' that tomorrow there was no M and K any more, who knows - it could have been any of those things, or all of them, or something else entirely. M didn't know, but whatever it was it was enough to make her press her lips on K's, strong and long enough to make a difference but still just short enough for M not to get lost in the taste of cheap wine and tobacco and salt that was K. 

it could have meant nothing; and it could have meant everything.

but it made no difference any more, and it didn't matter; and the walls of the city ate the two inside themselves, consumed the utter insignificance that was M and K and the unimportance of everything they might have or might have not been. the city took all this and melted it into the chipped concrete, rusty iron and shattered window panes, cast the laughter and tears and possibility of a broken hearts into the blind buildings together with everything that had happened and everything that would happen. because that is what cities are made of, memories; that is the foundation as well as the mortar that keeps the bricks together. without memories there is no city, it does not exist; and even if it does not care, it still needs each and every one. 

and if you look around, careful enough, with an attentive eye and an open mind, maybe you will see M and K - or maybe you will see something else. but rest assured it is all there, all the time, and you are too; the city does remember even when we forget.