I have been trying to fall in love with this city of stone.
With its grey roads and dirt-streaked walls
With train carriages of unfriendly shoulders and half-dead faces
With air that tastes of grit and gas
With murky water and a wind that reaches fingers through the cracks in clothing I didn’t know were there
With beggars on every corner and sometimes in between
With sleet and cold nights and scowling bus drivers .

But today the sun came out.

And I remembered how soft stone can look in orange light
Flower pots perched precariously on top-floor windowsills
The fleeting green glint of parakeets in sunlight
Secrets carved into buildings older than any of its residents
The tiny parks hidden in the rambling, nonsensical layout of this ancient city
The glitter of glass in the early evening
Street views from the tops of double decker buses
A carpet of pink crocuses
The proud domes and clock towers of an ancient skyline,
And I realised that the air here can be soft too.

Today I felt, for the first time, that I could be happy in this city of stone,
and not the city of glass.