Dear Wigleaf,

We recently moved from Baltimore, MD to Ithaca, NY, and as beautiful as this little town is — there's a lake here the exact color of a keyhole — I can't help feeling as though it's Baltimore thatÕs left me instead of the other way around. Friends miss us in Baltimore, I'm sure. Certainly our neighborhood Chinese takeout place misses our Thursday dinner money. But the city continues without us.

It almost feels like a betrayal that everything there should just keep going about its day, not so much as jostled by my absence, as if I mattered less than a pothole. At least when Mayor Schaefer patched the city's potholes, he painted them over with hearts. A goodbye, a blown kiss.

My old apartment already has a new family.

Looking out my window, the light a particularly Ithacan shade of gray-green, I remember that this new city wasnÕt sitting around waiting for me to arrive and neither will it waste thoughts on me once I'm gone. I remember I don't want to be a pothole.

I love Baltimore. I love the tree outside my new window. I love knowing that the world will continue despite my best and my worst, and it's my charge to do likewise. And so, we do. We continue.
Baltimore, if youÕre listening, the weatherÕs beautiful and I wish you were here.

with love,
KC




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Read KC's story.

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