Dear Baltimore,

My unpretentious lover who doesn't shame me when I have spinach in my teeth, teaches me to ease into your straightforward rhythms, find the complications hidden in your facade of accessibility, adore your paradoxes, your humble beginnings; you winning underdog, you post-industrial hovel, your calloused fingertips run the length of my spine, your sure hands at the small of my back hover; Your breath is stale coffee, your lips a smirk that so easily form a kiss; you chain-smoking, disenfranchised day laborer with cuffed jeans and a black skull cap; you sad bastard who loves the untamed wildness in me that I've held back, pushed in, and stuffed up...so large, lousy with loose ends, mad with cursed yearning, what I want to say is it will never be over between us...