The Slow Unleaving (Descending In Pieces)

The room’s emptied to echoes now, the song’s looped out, Morrissey’s gone quiet, only the radiator’s last tick and the city’s low growl outside remain, and I stand, though my legs complain, my knees are locked from too much couch theology. The coat-rack in the hall leans like a drunk priest, sleeves dangling confessions. I reach first for the black wool one, heavy, funeral-smart, smells of old rain and someone else’s cigarettes, arms in, shoulders shrug, and the mirror gives back a man who’s already late for his own funeral, a man of too much weight, of too much yesterday, so off it comes.

Next the navy peacoat of brass buttons and that stubborn collar, stiff as a judge’s sentence, and I button it halfway, and I feel the chest compress, my breath shorten, and I think, no, this is the coat of a man who’s decided to stay respectable while the world burns, not me, not tonight. Buttons pop open one by one in slow surrender, and yet another coat slides to the floor like a shed skin I refuse to wear.

Then the old green parka, frayed at the cuffs, zipper teeth missing half their bite, and I zip it halfway, hood up, look in the mirror and see a boy pretending he’s ready for the cold, and the pockets are still full of ghosts: a crumpled ticket stub, a lighter that won’t light, a receipt for a drink I never finished, and memory, too much memory, too much soft, and so I shrug it off fast, and let it drop like a bad alibi.

Last one, the grey herringbone, thin, worn at the elbows, lining torn in places but still holding shape. I slide arms in slow, feel the wool settle across the shoulders like it remembers them, collar turns up easy, no fight, mirror nods once, aye, this one fits, not perfect, nothing is, but it fits the ache, fits the shyness criminally vulgar, fits the man who’s half leaving, half staying forever. Buttons done, one loose thread dangling like a question mark. This is the coat, this is the one that gets to walk out with me.

Now the doors, and hell, the hallway’s a gauntlet of them, each one pretending to be the exit. First door: bathroom, and the light flickers on like an accusation, and the mirror seems still fogged from someone’s long hot shower. No. Second: a cupboard, coats and coats again, an avalanche of sleeves, and that smell, that smell of mothballs. Third: a bedroom, bed unmade, two bodies still tangled under quilt, or not, who knows, breathing slow animal sleep, and I close it soft, click, like closing a book I’m not ready to finish. Fourth: the one I came in through, maybe, heavy wood, handle cold as irony, but when I turn it, it’s locked, of course locked. The night doesn’t let you out that easy.

Back to the hallway, legs heavier now, coat heavier, my heart’s doing its small panicked thud-thud. The real exit, the staircase door at the far end, frosted glass showing the dim glow of the landing light, is the one I push open now, and cold rushes up the stairwell like breath from a basement grave. Steps drop away steep, narrow, Edinburgh tenement special, stone worn smooth by a century of drunks and lovers and people who thought they were leaving for good.

First step down, and the legs hesitate, and the knees wobble like they’ve forgotten the contract, and the hand grips the rail, iron cold, sticky with years of palms, and the second step’s hardly better, because the coat swings, and catches on the banister, and pulls me sideways. It’s the third step when the whole staircase tilts in the head, and vertigo whispers lean-lean-lean, and my breath shortens, chest tight under the herringbone. I descend. Slow. Each step a negotiation with the body: you promised you’d leave, now prove it.

Ninth step, halfway, landing, small window showing black sky turning grey at the edges, and I stop, and I breathe, and I notice how the staircase keeps dropping, patient, merciless, waiting for me to admit I’m still human, still needing to be loved, still afraid of the cold outside.

The door at the bottom looms, and streetlight leaks under it like spilled milk, and I actually reach it, hand on handle, turn, and it opens, and cool air rushes in, sharp, clean, unforgiving. I step through, and the staircase sighs behind me, satisfied, and the night waits, and I — coat on, shyness still vulgar, still mine — begin the slow walk into whatever comes next.

Dalry Road is a book-length prose-poetry project set in Edinburgh, unfolding through long, rhythm-driven fragments that trace a city across night, memory, and movement. Neither novel nor traditional poetry collection, the book occupies a liminal space between narrative and lyric, where sentences stretch, loop, and accumulate like footsteps on wet stone.The text follows a wandering first-person voice moving through streets, bus stops, stairwells, and fleeting encounters in the hours before morning. Weather, light, and sound are not background but active forces: rain writes, streetlamps mutter, stone remembers. The city is experienced from within, not described from a distance, and language mirrors this intimacy through dense, breath-heavy phrasing and a jazz-like cadence influenced by writers such as James Joyce and Jack Kerouac.

Rather than telling a linear story, Dalry Road assembles an atmosphere. Past and present blur, faces recur in altered forms, and memory intrudes without warning. The fragments resist resolution, favouring repetition, drift, and sensation over explanation. What emerges is a portrait of urban consciousness at night—half-dreaming, half-alert—where walking becomes a way of thinking and listening.