There are days when London spikes in my blood, like electricity. Like a fever. On those days, the 200 miles between us is not enough. Not near enough.
An offer came, after. York. The NHS isn't what it used to be; difficult, tied in bureaucracy. But it came nonetheless. Someone knew I was struggling. He sent me somewhere that I wouldn't be paralyzed by turning corners. There. Where we crouched in an alleyway. There. A piece of a puzzle only he could fit together. There. He looked at me with a half smile that meant "you did well".
I must have just wandered for a week or so, unable to believe, somehow, that the place was still standing. There were no cracks in the building facades. No sinkholes had opened in the middle of the pavements. The trains ran roughly on time, as they always do. There was no fucking damage. There should have been damage, shouldn't there? Was he not such a part of this place that his passing shouldn't have rocked the foundations, down the Roman walls?
York has a river too. The Ouse. Autumn and winter, during heavy rains, it swallows pieces of this old place; breaking and entering everywhere. Unwelcome. The last time, I wandered up to my knees in water rushing faster than it appeared. I think I was trying to feel the City, as it came by way of the Channel. Any small piece of the place that was so much him. Immersed in what washed over his bones.
I sometimes imagine the Thames rising to take London. Why hasn't that happened yet? The water should rush though the tunnels of the Underground. Pour into the gilded halls of government. Drown the dusty graves of kings. Erase all memories of the place that he infused with himself, leaving only a flood plain and muddy ruin.
But the river is still now. I watch sometimes, in the middle of the night on a webcam in Chelsea. Even at this late hour, taillights chase each other across Battersea Bridge while the hungry water carries the reflections to the sea. It takes it's time. Maybe it's waiting.
Rise up, I whisper.
Rise up.