Love Letter

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 

I dragged myself out of bed this morning, I'll admit. But the work load ahead was light, the day meant for sauntering in flannel pajamas and drinking countless glasses of bubbly before dark. Rumors came of warm winds, but you couldn't believe it from inside the Christmas lit apartment on East 4th street. When I finally made my way outside at dusk, nothing had yet prepared me for the tropical air that enveloped the city in summer songs.

I made my way south along Allen, turned at Delancey, where the Scandinavian restaurant with a seedy back room behind the kitchen had been replaced by an oyster bar. Walked with determined steps up the unending slope that is the Williamsburg bridge. There is a spot in the middle where the two sides meet, you can cross over and stare unabashedly at the city skyline so long as you mind the speeding bicycles. A man stood above the train tracks playing his saxophone. Perhaps he was self conscious for the sounds. The ground shakes here every time a train passes. It feels like a reassuring rocking in your belly. 

But here's the point I'm trying to make, New York, however ineloquently, and it is that I love you. It is that no matter the day, or year, or weather, I am happier with you than I ever have been without. That no matter the money in my pocket or the success on my papers, ever day I live here I have won. That I can look back fondly on the violent sorrow of every time I've left, a sadness that tore the organs from within my body and drained the light from my eyes, because they seem now a maudlin recollection of a time when we did not know better, of a threat that will not reappear. And however lonely, or mismatched, or confused I may find myself, simply walking your streets will make sense of the world again and make the pieces fall into place. I sleep sounder in your crazy cacophony than ever I did in the quiet darkness that is everywhere else. You make me a better person, you make my life unequivocally worth living, and I will spend the rest of my days attempting to deserve you. 

Faithfully, 

Yours.