Manchester: Falling in and out of love with asphalt.

There isn't another city of two million people that could feel so much like a village to me. There isn't another city that I want to apologise to so thoroughly for my absence.

There isn't another city whose air bowls me over - there is something in the water - I can feel the scent of Manchester in the rain; in the time just after, when the paving slabs shimmy with the noise of tiny stars; reflected from lampposts, passing cars, offices, derelict cinemas.

There isn't another city where I can gauge the angle of every road from every given location, where I can see how one part connects to another, where I can slot right into place with such ease.

There isn't another city where I can simultaneously stumble across three ex-boyfriends. There isn't another city where I can simultaneously so much want to stay and so much want to leave.

There isn't another city where I know my way from one end of a hospital to the other, where I have seen so many lines appear on faces and so many hairs fall out of heads. There isn't another city that has aged me, that I love and that I sometimes dread.

There isn't another city where I have an opinion about each new building, where every alteration of the skyline seems like a personal affront.

There isn't another city where every corner is soaked in memories, where somewhere beneath the rain and the piss I can be sure to find the trace of one or another of my life's momentous occasions. There isn't another city where every postcode is stamped into my genetic make-up, where every street sign rings alarm bells, where anonymity feels like such a stranger.

There isn't another city that I am able to remember in stages; where I can long for past buildings, old fields; where I can linger regretfully before bricked-up windows and remember where the glass used to be. There isn't another city so able to bulldoze the years, so easily able to flush out events I thought were imprinted. There isn't another city so quick to refresh, to annul, to alter my dreams.

There isn't another city that has made lies of so many photographs, that has redesigned itself in my eyes with such speed that is has me walking into walls, grabbing at absent railings, exerting such force onto revolving doors that have ceased to be. There isn't another city that has me lost in so many of its buildings; expecting chairs, finding fruit machines; expecting solidarity, finding movement.

There isn't another city that so often abandons me, denies my history. There isn't another city so content to be without me, so happy to carry on. There isn't another city I would so love to fling my arms around, to embed myself in its rotundas, to submit to its double yellow lines being pasted all over me.

There isn't another city where my feet feel so comfortable, where the tarmac becomes me, where the trees line my outfits. There isn't another city where I can wait in the dark and, wrong though it is, feel as though somehow these roads will protect me; where I can feel as though somehow the time I have spent here grants me immunity (my own city could not kill me).

And wrong though it is, I feel safety. I feel the strong beams of streetlights like warm blankets around me. I feel puddles. I hear sirens. I touch walls. Look at houses. I hear late night brawls and raising voices. I walk on and the city street curves beneath my paces. Nothing can touch me because I am in love with this city. I keep my eyes to the ground and my feet know exactly where to go.

There is no other city that so much resembles the shape of a human heart.