Dear Pittsburgh:

These thoughts for you, from one of the world's most pathetically non-updated blogs:

Today I remembered walking through the South Side, peeking into the shops, feeling the energy that comes up from the river. You know that little hot dog shop on the corner where you can get any kind of ridiculous toppings that you like? It's just that I was thinking of you, darling Pittsburgh, and suddenly I wanted to walk with him into all the secrets your streets hold for me.

He wouldn't appreciate the hot dogs, since I've turned up yet another vegetarian. But he loves you, Pittsburgh, knows you from some restless months of driving the country, investigated your Indian restaurants and movie theaters. We love you, dear city. It is something that we have in common.

I am being unfair, really. I could have told you every little detail about him, every sentence or thoughtful gesture. I could have told you how he teaches me boxing, or dances with me in the kitchen. How he wonders if the man who left me behind knows about him.

It's just that I want to keep him to myself. Or perhaps that being too excited, feeling too much, might just drive him away.

I'm being unfair to him, too. In my heart, there is a terrible, sudden spring, exactly when I expected some dramatic desert in winter. Sometimes, a fragrance, one errant bloom, will escape, and that's all I'm willing to tell him now. I spend my days negotiating eighth graders blooming into social butterflies, and this sense that I contain a rare treasure inside myself.

In the plainest English, it's spring in Virginia, and I'm falling in love, whether I was ready to or not.