London Travel Guide

They often ask me how I survived.

A childhood in the city.

Among the fog that meanders down the Thames and creeps up to my front door.

They ask me how I slept through the headlines.

56 dead.

How can I take their seat on The Tube.

Mind the Gap.

They ask me how much my father earns. The garden. The Postcode.

How will I survive?

Climbing ladders alone.

How can I walk past the dealers on the corner. Didn’t they go to your school, you ask me?

Yes, we did geography together.

Yet,

They forget to ask me how the sky is painted milky pink.

Those last breaths before it’s dipped in ink.

The way the sun hits the crescent of the Mosque.

The church.

The synagogue.

They forget to ask me how my heart feels when the leaves crunch under my boots.

And the laughter of the man behind the bar,

his gut almost as great as his humour.

They forget to ask me how my coffee is,

from the coffee shop older than America.

They ask me how I survived

But,

they forgot to ask me how I fell in love.

By Sophia Parvizi-Wayne

Duke Student, leader of national campaign on mental health, Cross Country All-ACC, fashion alchemist, Huffington Post writer, and all-around world-runner

Photography by Darius Parvizi-Wayne