How can I convince you, Iโ€™m a river not a sewer?!

I wasn’t always caged in Victorian walls, raging in the dark of an underground vein, sunlight dust-diluted, broken by gratings. My world was of willows and birdsong, the tickle of fish and a sunbeam’s shimmer on the cusp of summer. I was calm as the centuries that wore my bends wider, steady as the creed chanted at the village church, free as the clouds who were my mirror.

That is lost. But I don’t weep. I wait. The city cannot be forever.