Their minds were sudden merchants: metaphor, like money, equalised the incommensurable. — China Miéville

A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don’t look back, don’t be each other’s anchors, no nostalgia. I wasn’t expecting any of them to return.

“I don’t want to be a simile anymore,” I said. “I want to be a metaphor.”

It wasn’t a city anymore, it was a collection of broken places separated by war without politics or acquisition so not war at all really but something more pathological.