Well Dallas, you did it again. Why I let you do this to me, I do not know. I want something from you, but clearly it is not mine to have. There are those blessed and those cursed, and I not the former.

At least last time it was a surprise knife to the back. And there was protocol to be followed. Remove knife. Go to court. City vehicles come for belongings.

This time you were a Mac truck. I saw you coming from so far away, and still just stood there in the middle of the road. Your driver even fired some shots at me as they accelerated from the horizon, Texas style. One in the leg, one in the stomach, one in the lung. Why didn't I take that as a sign I might not want to be there when your tonnage arrived to flatten me on the asphalt? I don't know. They didn't hurt so bad after a few seconds.

And, well, you are amazing. Beautiful and smart and infuriating in all the right ways. I love you.

Dallas, you say you are afraid I am going to hate you. Well the problem is the only other way to feel is love, and that's not an option. And you deserve to be hated. This is a binary emotional world we inhabit. Love or murder. Embrace or suicide. Get busy dieing or get busy dying.

It's just that the former seems pretty tapped out by now, doesn't it? You have all these people living within your borders with reasons, connections, birds. Loves they are so accustomed to that they don't even care that they have it. It's the status quo. They have traffic and dirty dishes and computers crashing and lost keys to be upset about. They have no clue.

So why don't you join them. It's a happy place, even if you might not know it when you are there. You have your birds to nurture and let fly someday. You have your loves to take for granted.

I don't and so I occupy a special forgotten place in your purlieus. I live under the bridges. I beg for handouts at the stoplights. Someday I will die. Most days I wish it were someday already. And I will be quickly forgotten, there is no heart bound to mine, no birds in my neighborhood. No one that needs to be reminded how much they took me for granted. Just unharassed drivers, fleas and ticks and diseases that must find a new host.

One of your small boroughs wrote me, told me I am "...toting this gigantic bursting heart, generous, thoughtful, meaningful with a wealth of soul...completely unique...beautiful eyes that make you a horrible liar, even when what you're thinking isn't so pretty." And I briefly soak their platitudes and hang their plaque on my wall, but the problem is you are Dallas. You are the whole thing. And without your love why would I want to stay? The taxes are high. The roads suck. You loved me once, but now that's gone, so don't try to convince me otherwise.

...

Oh Dallas, if you are sad about my disappearance, imagine how I must feel. I am the toddler dropped in the suburban dumpster, climbed out, picked trash out of hair, looked around, started walking. Directionless, loveless, rejected. I mean, I know you said I could come back anytime, once I was grown, but really? A dumpster? Don't you remember that The Heart Remains a Child?

Besides, this is something approaching the 10th time you've done this. And each dumpster got farther and farther from your warm, sky-scrapered center. Each drive out a longer moment of bliss, that warm car, the steady feel of tires over pavement (are we moving? could it be?); each dumpster dive a colder, more surprising shock to the system. At this point you've driven me so far out there's no way to find my way back; it's closer to just walk to the next city. That was the point, right? I know it broke your heart to do it, but population issues. Over density. I get it. I used to be my own city once.

Even if I did come back, haven't you seen this in my eyes: that my heart is dead, my soul left behind? Maybe I will be unable to find it in any city--of this I am catastrophically frightened--but surely there is no chance to find it again on your streets.