For Chicago

I want Chicago more than I thought. I thought it was time to move on, that I could never have it as I remember, tainted

by 20 pounds

and crippling anxiety attacks,

gruesome bloody bathroom scenes. That I wanted you

more than I wanted my freedom.

Stuck in love,

I left.

Yet now,

give it to me and I would take it.

Give me bike rides through traffic jams,

brushing elbows with bumpers.

Give me bums slinging threats under stale breaths

and mouths full of holes, they whistle as they shout,

“Spare change?” till the rushing El

drowns out any courteous thoughts

and me, I’m just wishing to feel suffocated

under concrete mountains and 3 million bodies breaking to the same heartbeat.

Give me the absence of the smell of rain.

Give me dirty gutter stained pant legs –

I never was one for open-toed shoes - and it’s too quiet tonight.

I can’t sleep tonight.

Where is the roar of a city bursting,

unhindered by 9pm,

free-flowing through a night, never sleeping?

This body was built with the city in mind. Birthed

in the low-lying plains of the Midwest,

these veins always flowed southeast.

And these roots never took to the too rich

soil of a starry sky and the coyots yipping

and there’s a locust crying for every time I felt out of place

because I wore my jeans too tight,

because I wore my hair too short,

I wrote too much poetry and read too many books,

and I believe in God but I’m pro-choice

and drop jaw for a woman with a nice pair of legs.

I might as well be finger-tipping the sky, this mind

too wide open and eyes that saw more than country had bargained for.

So I sold my soul and I would sell it over

and over again for a smog and a heat

and a roar and a bustle.

This body was never meant to breath easy.