February is for lovers

“The more you love Memphis, the more it will love you back.”
- Joe


A young man with long, windswept curls remembers a time that downtown Memphis was his. His to park freely. His to roam. A downtown of empty, abandoned buildings where he could run and explore and yell and no one would be the wiser.

He’s all for the community embracing the downtown that was once his, for the loft apartments blossoming from the empty factory shells, for the lack of parking spaces. But he’s a little sad his landscape is changing.

* * *

There is a woman in Northhaven who is afraid to go outside. The very name of her neighborhood is now a bitter irony. Gunshots ring out at night. Shadowy figures are her nameless, faceless neighbors. Across town, residents in a duplex apartment should maybe be a bit more concerned about going outside. A woman’s boyfriend goes missing but later reports that the next door neighbor was awfully understanding when he climbed into bed with her by mistake.

* * *

Chris was done trying to find Miss Right in Memphis. The dating scene was a game of chasing magnets; you push one harder only to have the other just scoot farther away. The California desert seemed right. Not about finding HER, exactly. More about finding himself. But he noticed the blonde at the seminar almost immediately. Her open smile, the things she claimed were most important to her. It was like she was talking about his values, too. Their small group got even smaller. She told him she was from Jackson, a place he never would have heard of just outside of Memphis.

Chris’ wife beamed at him from her seat in the front row.