Goodbyes are bittersweet, bitter like the unloved lovers who never hold too close and sweet like them that never let go, sweet like a promise not kept, sweet sweat smells of bodies too close and hands touching, touch only in dreams, sour like roadside fruit shops and skies of stormy grey, almost-grey eyes, boys of poetry and girls of song, stormy skies before it rains in the city, the city with roads that never end and tramlines that never touch, the city of fruit smell and sweat smell and dead smell and dead birds, the city of love and rain. The city streets love like a sewer, one way, never ending, sometimes requited, sometimes forgiven. Forgiven of its hammers and sickles and tired feet and leering men, busy bodies in buses with poets crushed under the wheels, poetry lingers in the air here, but no one has written anything in a year, everyone is running out of words and waiting for the sun to come out. Goodbyes are easy, right here, right now, when the dust is down and the city is teary-eyed and forgiving. Goodbyes are beautiful. Everything is beautiful till the sun comes out again.
But as long as it rains, the city will always be a lover and never a home.
