Memphis...

I fall in love easily. Or at least, that was the case with Memphis, when I was sixteen and declared to my mother while visiting that I thought Memphis was great and I wanted to live there.

I "left" Memphis a couple of weeks ago, but it hadn't really sunk in. Tomorrow, I'm leaving Tennessee for Berkeley, CA. The vast majority of Tennessee I'm kind of happy to be escaping, but glorious, midtown Memphis . . . Memphis, I will miss. I'm going to miss the bungalows. I'm going to miss driving down North Parkway with a canopy of trees. I'm going to miss not being able to figure out for certain if it's the monkeys at the zoo or the fratboys making noise. I'm going to miss Al Rayan's amazing food, the BBQ Tofu at Tracks, Central BBQ, the freaking Sputnik outside of Joe's Wines and Liquors, getting lost and exploring a new part of the city, Cooper-Young, the Campus Safety office, the churches, Elmwood cemetery, the random funky signs that are everywhere, hitting all the thrift stores on Summer Ave., Summer Ave., the pretty that is Peabody, driving back from West Memphis at night, the Mississippi, the flat terrain . . .

I'm going to miss that Memphis won't allow her lovers to become trapped in a white tower and forget reality, both the ways it's beautiful and flaws that need to be fixed.

Memphis, I will miss you.