Leeds Elaborated

There are two moments - a day, a night - I will cherish from my time in Leeds (I cherish and miss and barely believe in it any more). For their magic and their promise and their beauty.

The first, the easiest, was only my second to last weekend in Leeds. Perhaps I remember it so clearly because it was recent. But more than that, I think it was the height of one particular aspect of my life in Leeds that I adored. It was the nature of Yorkshire; the moors; the lay of land, so to speak.
I wanted to say goodbye to the moors and views so I took the train and the bus to Haworth - with the usual anxiety and worry - and visited the Brontë Museum again and then I went west, out on the moors. I followed a trail, the Brontë Way, and at first it was populated by tourists and walkers like myself. But after I passed the Brontë Waterfall the number of hikers thinned out. The path was thin and less well-trodden. It travelled up and down the moors, along the little brook that led to the waterfall. The view showed Haworth and Keighley in the distance, and green-and-brown hills in every other direction.
And. It. Was. Breathless.
The extraordinary feeling, the one I will cherish, was walking straight away from civilisation (Haworth in my back, nothing in front of me). Even though I knew I wasn't alone (ridiculous bikers left by the previous wall, a few meetings in the form of fellow hikers), it felt a if I was leaving the populated world behind. It felt as if I could walk until I dropped without seeing another human being. And all the time in that gorgeous environment.
It was the feeling of freedom. A feeling I so strive for, adore and yearn for. Am addicted of.


The second was the night in March when I went to my second poetry reading and was blown away by Helen Mort and made casual conversation with a girl also in my module 'Fictions of Fallen Women' and saw someone I was almost-interested in and he noticed me and I realised (that very night) that I was being ridiculous and also was having a crush. Stupid of me, naturally. All of this was important and I can't tell what mattered the most which is why I love that night so much. I spent the ride on the bus home SO HAPPY, my heart beating unevenly and I could taste hope and beauty and life and it was unbelievable.
The wonderful part is that reading Helen Mort's poems brings me back. Not it back to me; me back to then. I'm there. I hear the cadence and warmth and melancholy in her voice when she says

So forgive me if I looked up
past your face, to see those nearly-silver drops
make rivers in the dark, and, for a moment,
almost thought there might be stars named after us.

and like hearing a song once sung at a concert, I'm there, alive and feeling everything at once; the hope and the disappointment and the acceptance of the ways of life.

(That horrible hope.)

It was what I brought with me from Leeds. A land where I want to be buried. Where I feel at home. And the fragile, flickering hope that there might be somewhere I could feel content and alive; a room with kindred souls and poetry and red wine.