Chicago

City of shoulders, Sandburg said, and the shoulders are still here— broader now, more tattooed, still carrying what needs carrying. The lake doesn't care about your problems. It sits there, impossibly blue, impossibly cold, like a beautiful answer to a question no one asked. The trains rattle overhead with the confidence of things that know their route— the Loop, the Loop, always the Loop, like the city itself going in circles and calling it progress. In winter, Chicago doesn't ask if you're tough. It assumes you're not and dares you to prove it. The wind off the lake is not a metaphor. It is a wind. It will take your hat, your dignity, your romantic ideas about seasons. But spring— oh, spring in Chicago— when the whole city exhales and the patios open like flowers that serve beer and everyone forgives the winter the way you forgive anyone who almost killed you but didn't. This city was built by people who refused to be reasonable. It burned down and they said: Again. Higher. That's Chicago: the audacity of rebuilding in a place the weather has clearly said is not for you.