New Orleans, Louisiana

There are some corners, some streets, where time never seems to change, where everything that ever was remains. I’ve known so many of those geographical anomalies: my grandparents’ kitchen table, where the truck’s carburetor is forever choking and my Aunt won’t be home for the holidays; my childhood bedroom, where the stuffed animals stare with glassy eyes at imaginary worlds; the University of Alabama campus, where my high school boyfriend still sits outside Bibb Graves Hall, grinning from ear to ear, cowlicks pushing his ball cap aside as he waits to walk me home from Psych 101.

New Orleans is one of those places as well, and I suspect I will always be able to wander its streets and find the jumble of emotions I left lying in its gutters. For a faint sliver of time though, I stood at the corner of Chartres and St. Louis and let myself get lost in wonder. I still believe that goodness and nobility exists. I still believe in knights in shining armor and fleet-footed stallions and the snowy copse in the forest so deep.

I still believe in magic. And no one can take that away from me.

Music: Bleeding by The Prom Kings (lyrics)