When I was little, I used to watch Kung-Fu movies. I loved them for the daring, the power, and the overdramatic flourishes. I distinctly recall one movie, a really good one, where a Kung-Fu Master was poisoned by a conspirator whilst he was asleep. When he awoke the poison had already spread throughout his body, and his doom seemed imminent. However, being the master that he is, he gathered all his chi, puuuuushed all the poison into his arm, and then, with his face twisted and his arm red and pulsating, he sliced the arm clean away. And as the lifeless appendage fell to the ground admist a spray of his own blood, he was purged of this contamination, and he was given his life back.
I had put it out of my mind. I thought I had purged myself of this insidious delicious poison. But those wonderful things about you, those that once caused me to spin headlong into you, doesn't just disappear just because we're no longer convenient, do they? I cannot sever myself from myself as cleanly as the Kung-Fu Master. I am a master of nothing.
I've always yearned for those romantic moments. I've been told that they don't exist by others, but secretly, I've always nursed the daydream of being swept away. And I was, once again. And it was you, once again. All it took was a few hours alone with you, traversing the streets of Chicago in the last throes of winter. Everyone says that Paris is a romantic city. Fuck that. The streets of Belmont, in its grimy, cluttered, eccentric sprawl, is the most romantic place in the world. We talked, the conversation flowing between us of its own volition. We laughed, with orange and blue and green neon lights reflecting off our teeth. Chicago is the most romantic city in the world for me.
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