Dear New Orleans

"I feel like in a lot of ways I haven't invested in this city the way I want to. and I miss my sexuality. That's a part of my life I really haven't connected with in a long time...Which is a fun and dangerous and creative and interesting process." I swirled the Jack and coke in my hand. The clinking of ice against a rocks glass is the sound of family, of my childhood, and now... of my life in the Big Easy.

"You and New Orleans need to start over." She looked up at me from her beer, cigarette still danging in hand over the ash tray. The last of the light caught on the glass, reflecting down the table. My eyes still had not adjusted in the darkness of the bar. My city. I can't help but fall in love with dark neighborhood watering holes, bars sandwiched between the rows of Creole shotgun homes.

"How does that conversation go? It wasn't you. It was me." I giggle. "That's a conversation neither of us have had before..." Her eyes shone in the darkness. She smiled at my sarcasm. Cat-like.

"She's like a book you never read, because you bought it at a time when you had way too much to read."

I like a woman who can speak poetry. I smile. I don't have a choice -- she's right.

"Or a chapter that I haven't begun yet. We have some beautiful history. But I think there is more to come."

"Definitely." So much more, I hope.