Dear Chicago,

Will you take me back? It’s been many moons since your streetlamp lights have blocked out the view of the stars. It’s been too long since you first took me in, opened me up and carried me away. I was a child then. We would be celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year, had I stayed.
Chicago, IL 2013

But you’ve always stayed a part of me, haven’t you?

I was written with words from your very own vocabulary. I was born in your hardship, raised up by your people. I learned to live by the language of your streets.

It is a homecoming, of sorts. I’ve tasted of your forked tongue corruption. I’ve been held up and stood up and let down, not so easily. I’ve face planted into the roughness of the tripped up sidewalks, fallen into the scurry of the leaves. You broke me up and left me to nurse my wounds.

Chicago, IL 2011

You took the bitterness from my ankles, left me cold and dried up like a skeleton leaf. You blew Winter up my nostrils and into my heart and then gave me the courage to bleed again. You invited me in with apathetic cordiality. You were always yourself.

Dear Chicago, do you remember teaching me how to walk with my head up? Fast and like I knew where I was going, even when I was lost? Do you remember the snowy rides on my beat up bicycle, weaving around parked cars, always alert to doors that might suddenly open and fling me over the handle bars?

Do you remember the early days when you courted me? When I had the time to get lost in your diagonal arms and legs? I stumbled through your pocket jeans and always came up with treasure. I learned your directions by always facing the lake, even when I couldn’t see it. I learned to feel its shoreless depth the way I learned to feel my own gravity when it’s pressed up against someone else’s.

Chicago, IL 2011

You gave me wind rash. My cheeks burned red with the fierceness of your breath. I didn’t know that was a thing. Didn’t realize what was possible or what I was capable of until I studied your lines. I started hearing voices and swallowing screams. I looked away and kept looking down. Down from the high rises where the old were dying. Down from the platform where I started being recognized for selling my own plasma.

I learned to carry oranges in my shoulder bag, and sometimes homemade cookies too. I started gently lifting headphones off the heads of my homeless friends so I could hear Guns & Roses play in my ears. I learned when to look someone in the eye and where to peer into the alleyway, just in case.

We celebrated, too. With a lot of pizza. And gummy bear infused vodka on Hollywood Beach. I came of age under your watch. Used fake I.D.’s and shotgunned peppermint schnapps in the front seat. Had my first lover and listened to a lot of Rilo Kiley. And Rootless Tree on repeat.

Chicago, IL 2013

There was one year all we heard was HOPE. You were the center stage of the whole world, and you sure did shine. For a moment all of the scandals and the Daleys were swept under the grandiose rug in the grand ballroom and everyone danced. I was there, too. I skipped class and took pictures of America the Beautiful the night we all felt like we belonged. Like anything could happen, like there was no more separation. We sat beneath the Jumbotron and felt HOPE come into our hearts like a flock of birds.

After a few years, I left. I finished our contract and let myself out the door. I had other places to go, other ties to keep and knots to unfold. I’m not sure you noticed. I was all scrunched up in pain and shots of disappointment. I drank them like a fish, one after the other. I inhaled grief like so much opium. It was a powerful numbing tool but the relief was only temporary.

Chicago, IL 2013

I think maybe I blamed you too much. Forgot about the good parts. The early days when I was happy just to know you, content just to disappear into the windowpanes of the strangers’ houses we’d rush by. The brick ones with imported Christmas trees from forests far away. By the second year, we stopped going out as much. I stayed on the couch a lot. Took a lot of naps to counteract the all-night studying, the surviving. I wrapped myself up, soaked in chai tea and forgot to catch snowflakes on my nose.

Chicago, IL 2013

That was a long time ago. I’m mostly patched up now, so I hope you’ll take me back. I’d like to relearn the traces of your arteries beneath the tattooed asphalt. I’d like to know what you’re hiding and how you’ve changed. I’d like to get lost in your lights, to find constellations in your tallest buildings, to remember how they go together and how they don’t.

I want to hear the voice of that man from Minnesota, or Michigan, telling me what stop is next over the intercom. I want to fall asleep to the rhythm of the El only to wake up right where I’ve started. I want to stare at the old man and the guitar like reunited soul mates, because we are. I want to pull out my sketchbook and take field notes of all your blocks and forget all of mine.

I know it won’t be easy.

Will you take me back, anyway? I’d like to try again.

Chicago, IL 2013