Sometimes I wish the lines I say (and draw) came out a bit more gentle. Then I wouldn't feel the need to speak through songs so sentimental toward the avenues and alleyways between my southeast home and yours, glamourizing every inch of the city streets that lie between our doors.

I remember frosty nights riding through the secluded driveways of Ladd's Addition. All alone on broken stone, my tires bumped. I was on a mission. I would ride so fast, the wind chill cutting at my exposed ears. The whistling noise it made, for those few minutes, it sequestered all my fears.

Sometimes I think about a girl I knew before I met you. We were so in love and when she left I thought I'd never get through all the ratty days that followed. Yellow leaves were falling, covering the curbs of Clinton Street as I waited for my calling.

I'd tense up every time a stranger passed on a bicycle. From a distance everyone looked just like her to a tired mind made fickle. On the path along the eastern shore of the river I thought my neck would break, straining in the wind to pedal onward through a constant double-take.

One day I went for a walk. The sky was so bare. Then halfway to Burnside, the rain fell from everywhere. I let that rain wash over me like an atheistic baptism and wondered in which town it was that I'd left my youthful optimism.

When the rain falls without warning, trapping us all in the encroaching gloom and left with nothing to say, we're all hiding away with paper and pen in the breakroom. I've discovered your deeper meaning, a hidden beauty exposed while the money's been tight. (Are there words I can use so this doesn't sound trite?)

Sometimes I stop to recognize that there is no chance between us, yet I still keep myself up every night dreaming of where the grass is greenest. I met you when the winter came and browned the City of Roses. Something about your ways had me in the bathroom mirror cutting all manner of dumb poses.

You helped me to forget the past and for that alone I thank you; you indirectly tuned the sharp strings and cued the microphone I sang through. Surely I am not the first or last boy you'll inspire and fill with doubt, and though you're laid out like a grid, I hope I never figure you out.

Sometimes I think to years ahead of me, to the day I'll move away, when wanderlust catches up to me — only a few goodbyes I'll say — but for now you're south of Stark and me, I'm north of Powell. I would describe that distance with a pretty word and yet I can't afford to buy the needed vowel.

One night I went for a walk. The sky was so black. I told the summer to shove itself, 'cause I'm never coming back. Downtown was all abuzz, they were lighting some tree in the square. Their clothes and hair were immaculate; I really had no business being there. So I left the suburban families and took the MAX up into the dark until the road was engulfed by trees. I got off and climbed to Washington Park.

From up there I could see the skyline, and it was strange 'cause I felt so proud. And in the dim glow of the purification plant, I opened my mouth and sang aloud:

"I'm so tired of mourning, so so long to these feelings of ruin now that the question's been posed and I'm smelling the rose, not waiting around for the perfume. And goodbye to grieving, although I know it'll put up a fight, but the spring will soon come and set everything right."

I'm finally sold on your morning. I'm sold on your mid-afternoon and now I'm even sold when I'm braving the cold and my face is hued like a cartoon. I'm sold on your evening. I'm sold on your blackest of nights as I wait to be sold on the next dawning light.