Stephan Zvodinsky

Chicago, A Beautiful and Sad Place

It's scary at times knowing how fast you can disappear from a city so vast. Chicago's walls can talk, they talk about the hot summer air that rattles their tiles, and the cold winter that makes their doors clench. Chicago is filled with beautiful people: boys and girls running in the water, purposely ripped from the city's bright red fire hydrants. They wait to be opened every summer. Uncles and fathers cook for their families while mothers nurse their babies. A group of teens ride their skateboards and bikes down the broken sidewalks and streets during a warm summer night. A night where the breeze feels like gracious waves that put you in complete bliss. Couples sit in parks, laying heads on each others shoulders, and pools overcrowd with smiling faces.

I see you. In a place you grew up in, I know how I always tease you on how 'suburban' you are, but truly we're both from this beautiful and sad city. Young black children and men are shot throughout the corners of streets and alleyways. Their mothers weep, and the father barely hold back their tears. This city makes you check the deepest corners of its physical standard, as well as the people that inhabit its bipolar presence. Boys grow in the worst of places, too scared to reach out for help because of the degrading judgment waiting on the other side of the question. Artists, performers, musicians, biochemist, and environmentalist are stuck in their tracks, pressing harder and deeper than the metal wheels of our public transit, the same transit that screeches louder than the bobcats far in the unknown mountains. The people born here are tired of the city, and the people moving in are tired of the peace and silent filled country. We're not stuck here, but it sure does feel like it. So we sit in the city's tears, but keep afloat, and we soar through the warm and heavy winds of  the poles , taking us to distances our minds have never seen. We love the city,but it sure doesn't Love all of us back. Chicago, a beautiful and sad city.