I’ll miss the daily life of Baltimore. The city always looked dressed in its Sunday best as I passed it by driving north on I-95 to work every night: smokestacks billowing cloud-white even in midnight hours, tall buildings in the distance made into checkerboards by their randomly lit windows.

I think I’ll love this city with the kind of enduring love reserved for friends you once said goodbye to at the train station — your last memory of them waving to you from above, smiling as they began to move away.

(Originally written in May 2014)