You haunt me, you know, your park benches empty in the shadows of moonlight

And your lamplights; desolately romantic as if longing for a lovers embrace.

I know not why you have called me out of them all. A million people

Thread through your streets everyday, every night, yet I am the one

With pen in hand, scribbling questions that you never answer

As I stare into your magnetic waters that tug at me from lands afar.

Are there others who wander you aimlessly, haunted by a melancholic longing?

I know not. Do they gaze on you with unwavering love, forgetting your scars

And bruises, your brutish bureaucracy and snappish shrugs-

Or do they just despise your perfection, your pride, your success?

I see only ever increasing circles in your waters, dragging me down,

Pulling me in, asking me why I parted and when I shall return

To be sucked in, hauled down, ripped bare and naked in front of you.

Ten years on- our anniversary, I am saddened, sombre, elated and overjoyed

In your presence but still know not why. Is it the simply the je n’es sais quoi?

A man stands before me and looks down at you from a bridge, hand against face,

And watches your motions. Is he as captured by you as I? Can he leave you,

Release you, let go of you- like I cannot. What lies so deep within his stare?

What makes him stop, like I, upon your bridge, before your Lady, our Lady, and look

And wish and wonder? I know not what his reasons are as much as I know not my own.

Am I your folly or is it you that are mine? Tell me, speak to me, inform me,

Embrace me amid your precious Pomp and Circumstance or let me go,

Sail me off and set me free. For I am yours for the asking, yours for the calling,

Yours in waiting, devoid of answers but so full of questions.

I smile when my feet hit your floor, cry when my eyes see your treasures

And fear everything you made me into, everything I ran from

And everything I left of me, with you, in my passing.

I am open book without ending, a poem without a point,

A line without structure. Is this it? Are we finished?

Or is this just a little repose?