*The M8 underpass behind Stow looking out to Speirs Wharf*

Hajar Shwarma’s falafel wraps tug me back to Glasgow.

The map of the city exists in my mind as two loops, the inner circle and the outer. The videos I’ve collected from Glasgow are pieces of the three-year puzzle I spent there. Walking over the bridge, looking out to the M8. Moments like those would linger like looking out a car window. The smell of the breeze sticks in my throat when I think about it.

*From now on it would smell of vanished light and dust*

Then I gulp down cold water.

Last year I wrote that Glasgow feels inviting now I’m leaving, that often happens. I’ll really miss Ranjit’s and Civic House: the area all around Garnet Hill felt like a rabbit warren. Josie and Jasmin dug it up and planted things there.

I can hear my breath in the video when I’m on my bike, coming up behind Stow on the M8 underpass. The lights of Speirs Wharf are fading into the dusk but it feels like the scene is pulsing and breathing on its own. One of those tingling type of evenings.

The video cuts short as I turn the corner, skidding along that narrow pass. Breathing heavy because of the hayfever. There’s no one round the corner, but I’m examining the cracks in the cement to see if they’ll trip me up.

The tyres have lost the tread and the gates to uni are closed but not locked.

We’d go to the Southside or West End to warm up.

When I was back last January, we found a man called Paul lying face down in the ice. He told us he was a drunk, but it’s too cold in Glasgow to sleep outdoors. There were boys on the corner who could have melted the snow with whisky. Aela called an ambulance, they denied us so we walked him home and locked him in. All as we were coming back from the Rose Reilly.

There’s something about Glasgow that I don’t want to leave behind. I record it to hold it, fold it up and put it in my back pocket. The street lamps burn small holes in the paper, pricking at the denim of my jeans; the blue ones I’d tie up with bobbles around my ankles.