I’ve made this walk before, but it’s been a long time, and here I am retracing old steps on wobbly legs. Back then, I’d be drunk, but I am dead sober and cold. Retrospection is this sort of curse I have, and here it is, nagging at me. There’s a statement I’ve been telling myself: “I have done this city wrong.”

Right from the start, every step was wrong. I mingled wrong, I drank wrong, I walked wrong, I spoke wrong, I slept wrong. I lied wrong.

That last one is the kicker.

I came here with a plan, things to look forward to. And now I’m leaving with, again, retrospection and bitterness just towards myself. Not towards the people I wronged, but myself, for wronging them. All those plans. The best laid. Falling through the unsupported floor I installed for myself. Bad planks that I slipped right through. I’m in the basement. It’s dark, flooding, and I am making no attempt to escape.

I’m sorry. To myself, to others, and to the city.