The hardest part
About writing
Is trying to speak
About someone
Who takes your breath away.

Dear Chicago
I have known you since birth
Was placed on this earth at the corner of belmont and clarke
Between thrift shops and sports bars
Amidst high rises and churches
At introduction was enamoured
Fell in love at first sight
Fell in love with your capacity
Your buildings
And skyline
Fell in love
With the way the pier's ferris wheel
Glows against lake michigan
How I felt invicible
The first time I ever rode it
A tourist attraction to say the least
But to me, has always been more
Has always been comforting
I claim to hate the cold
But the snow blanketing the trees in the winter time
Is a beauty unlike any other
Is painstakingly unbearable in it's temperature
But worth it
Worth the below zero windchill
Worth the frostbitten hands and hour long commutes
The weather has yet to prevent celebration
Couples bond over frozen lips with kisses and hot chocolate
Skates click against glass ice in Millenium park
I have always thought
That the city looks best dressed in christmas
In street lights
In holiday
In togetherness
In road rage turned blessing
It is hardest to hate what is shared
And freezing cold has a way of providing unity
As does autumn
How nothing has ever been more breathtaking
Than how leaves make death look graceful
How they make fifteenth story falls seem desirable
Something about the air
Feels different in the fall
But regardless of season
There is always warmth in the food
In the deep dish pizza that settles at the bottom of hungry stomachs
In the hotdogs that cannot be imitated in any other town
I have noticed
That some things can not be replaced
And this city
That I have grown up loving
Is not one that deserves to be changed
But still
Is imperfect
Is molding
Growing in ways more negative than good
In ways unwanted
Gang violence is no longer a rarity
Earning us a top spot on the list of high ****** rates
It seems today
That gunshots and sirens
Are the only music to be heard in the streets
That the jazz born here decades ago no longer plays
Only silent cry of mother losing child
Only unanswered prayer
Reports of daily shootings have become routine
Safety is not one of the stronget attributes
And a girl like me
Would be unable to securely navigate the streets on her own
Survive in this community turned war zone
Chicago
I have loved you
For as long as I have known what love is
I have painted picture after picture of you
Admiring your intricate details
Your originality
Your parts that can not be found any place else
But there are flaws
That have forced me to leave
Have driven me thousands of miles away
You must understand
That I needed someplace
That could offer me protection when alone
Chicago
I may not be in your arms
But you will always
Hold a place
In my heart
You will always
Be home.

There will be times
When your touch is not enough
To wrestle the demons out of me
Times when your hands
Loving in their intention
Will feel foreign
Will feel too similar
To every pair that has hurt me in the past
Will bare resemblance
To every one that has been laid on me
Will remind me of every bad memory I had planned on forgetting
So many times before
There will be times
When your touch is too much
And the amount of affection
Will be far too warranted
For what I feel deserve
Will feel overwhelming
Will feel blanket on heatwave blood
Feel like more than my worth
Worth more time than what I merit
There will be times
When you will have to practice holding me
Rehearse me into routine
Remind me that safety lives in your arms
In your gentle grip
In your palms resting backbone
Calming shoulders speaking comfort
I am still learning to be still
Still learning to not flinch
At a man's touch
But my skin craves to be loved
Almost as much as my heart does
And trust
Is something I am just starting to give out
So in regards to me
And the way you approach my body
Please proceed
With caution.

I wish I could write the poem
To make you fall in love with me
But I am still trying
To compose the one
To get me to love
Myself.

I am done writing love poems
Done pouring my starving heart into a never ending buffet of possibility
Optimism has never been a specialty of mine
Therefore I can never seem to pinpoint the positives
Or any kind of genuine reality
Only uncertainty
And minor cracks in the foundation
I am skilled in hanging on to breaking rope
With the mindset that it will hold
Too many times have I unknowingly tied my own noose
With over analyzed thoughts
My soul is always eager
To grab at whatever arms shoot out towards me
Justifying the flaws in their grip
With the only alternative being seclusion
I used to avoid solidarity
For fear that isolation was a trap to being made undesirable
I now know this is myth
That being alone does not destroy your chances at finding love
Love is a term that I have never correctly defined
I have spelled it out on countless occasions
Unaware that my definitions were unsound
Romanticising the blatant errors in every episode
Believing that love was supposed to hurt
Engraining it into muscle memory
I have hurled myself towards black holes expecting nothing less than escape
Only to find that everything has an ending
From it all I have learned
That happiness through another can not be created with metaphors
And a sense of hope
That it can only be made with sincerity
Therefore
I am through with writing love poems
Through with throwing sentences at people like lassos
You cannot make someone love you
With words
You can only incite it
So I am done writing love poems
Until I find someone
Willing to write me
A novel.

Love for me
Has never been about
Finding someone who makes you happy
Instead
Has always been about
Finding someone
Who is worth waking up for
In order to face the world
After all
Finding someone
Who makes you happy
Is simple
Happiness
Is sort of a momentary thing
Eventually requiring upkeep
But happiness
Is not a challenge
Instead
Find someone
Who is enough
To make you want to get up
And get through the day
Just so
You can get back to them
To do it again
Tomorrow.

They will never know our struggle
They will never know how to empathize
With our extreme abundance of feelings
We have so many words living on our tongue that sometimes
We almost choke trying to swallow them down
Therefore
We are constantly spitting them on to paper
And our journal entries look more like convulsions made by spasms of the hand
Than they do legible anything
But that's alright
We keep our heart in a metal flask
Open just enough to let the air seep in
Ready at all times to pour it out to anyone with open hands
Sometimes to the point of emptiness
Too many times do we leave ourselves with nothing
Having given so much of us to someone
Caution is not something we proceed with
Rather
Speed and recklessness
Blind optimism with eager motion
We are not capable of waiting
We are the ones who romanticize too soon
Fantasize in the most unsettling ways
We are the antagonists of our own stories
Yet we seem to always be searching for a happy ending
We are the wide eyed wanderers
The shy bodies built with open arms
Now and then
Love poems will escape from our fingertips
Never to reach their destination
Our memories are books we reread over and over again
Films that we replay just to remind us how it felt to feel
Our senses our heightened to the point where touch
Becomes crucial
And emotions
Become visible
We are the people
That you do not want to fall in love with
Because once we do
We will never
Fall out.