You are in my marrow, downtown. I love the first light of the skyscraper that is my tall neighbor in the morning darkness like I love the setting sun. I will miss the hiddenness of this place, the easy anonymity, the strangers who are friends in the minute on the streetcar, the way it doesn’t matter that I never remember which elevator buttons to push for familiar faces in the sharing of our lives between floors on our way home.
“This is your city,” J. says each time he drives up the little-used street too fast to crest hard over your glittering jewels of cement, stone, steel and glass, and I feel my heartbeat with yours.
I will miss your buried treasure. Your river market with great bunches of flowers that are mine for far less than their colors deserve. The merchant with the stores and stories of collected frames she’ll sell for a song and the found objects like old Birkenstocks she offers when you leave with your art under your arm and her pencil calling card in your hand.
You are filled with unexpected majesty around corners, and endless mystique, and I feel young with daring as I look back over my shoulder as we walk a mile of sidewalk home in the dark in falling snow because who can compete for an Uber with 15,000 other concertgoers. And why would one choose that when jazz music and a pink cocktail bisect the walk behind a famous door.
You are popup festivals and screaming sirens and the beltway for the opposing team when they drive by with their flags flying to claim the hotel next door. You are brick walls and patinaed French shutters and chandeliers with a pastry case and coffee.
You are both celebrated and disdained. Give me a mile any day over dirt and needles and debris to stop and look inside your doors to find your stories or explore your rooftops to see through your eyes. I will miss you as we trade a tower for terrafirma and more space for small pattering feet. And I would like to believe we will be back. Back inside your walls one day in a treehouse home with a viewpoint that anything is possible, and beauty is in and around you waiting to be found.
