*** Dear New York is the romanticized chronicle of a twentysomething’s affair with the Big Apple of his eye *** 

I rose to an uprising as irreverent clouds threatened the celestial Sun.

A coup d’état in the stratosphere.
Spears of light hurled recklessly in multiple directions.
There was a glorious war above me, yet my mind was preoccupied.

I had to see you.

I searched boulevards and boardwalks. Foregoing landmarks erected in your honor to see you for myself. I walked until my soles abandoned their obligations and surrendered to the sidewalk. They were worn out – so I recruited a new pair of foot soldiers to finish the journey.  I inquired about you along the way, suspecting the worse – your ill-spoken reputation whispered ominously in Southern backwoods as if the mere utterance could provide a second coming of the plague that is your Northern hospitality, or lack thereof. I found no trace. Only flattery that floated the idea of you to the King’s aid above.

I thought you would illuminate the starved seeds of assurance planted in my fertile heart. Instead, you soaked them in an outcry and we sought refuge in the depths beneath your beautiful surface to escape the rain reign of the new regime.

I loved your sense of humor.

It was there, in that hellacious descent, that the rose grew from concrete. The swarm of commuters crazed with busyness. The whirlwind of unspeakable debris summoned by metal. There in the eye of that perfect storm.

I saw you.

I felt your presence as you drew near to me. You relieved Time of his duties and we danced blissfully through eternity without sacrificing a millisecond. The curtains closed over my pupils. Intermission. I was lost within the depths of your soul – learning my way around. A willing prisoner sentenced to wandering your darkness with Fate as my tour guide. The blind leading the blind. I surrendered to the sounds instead. Entranced by the entr’acte. I painted the obscure walls with my imagination. I found myself within you and re-entered the world as a new man.

I saw the world in color for the first time.