When in Chicago...

     It started in its usual manner, in the master bedroom of my family's 500 sq feet studio apartment.  I'm an insomniac, so I would usually start the restlessness twilight, the normal turning and mumbling. Most nights my dad would already be up, waiting for his wake up call. He would routinely ask, what can I do, and I would habitually respond, walk. The dull fluorescent lights of our home almost criminally dried out our eyes, obscuring the warm glow of Chicago from our view. If it was any other city we would have been benevolent in the misery of what naivety we would have to face, but here, here the city shined right through.
     The pier, right behind us, looked candlelit from our view, luminous like an explosive oil painting that attracted the eyes of anyone from just a look from the periphery. We strode ahead, hand in hand until we finally reached the Willis Tower. Feeling so small up against it for the first time in what I would find to be recurring realizations, the sky and all the stars were simply the suburbs of Chicago, swirling around it but never exploring the radiance. The tower seemed to me like an achievement of man's greatest imagination, instead of crouching down near the earth like an ugly beast it soared past the grasp of any realistic bounds. From that point of vantage, it looked upon the impossible with fortified courage and hope.
     There are 110 floors in the Willis Tower building, so we went to 109. My dad pointed up to the ceiling and said,"This tower never sleeps. It stays awake all through the night, keeping watch over the city. During the day it runs people up and down it's nervous system, leaving each person with a shard to take home with them. On the topmost floor lies a special factory, its where dreams are made of. It floats down these dreams to every person in the city through it's twinkling windows all the way down to the to be illuminated bedrooms of this place's inhabitants.”
      I stepped forward to get a better glimpse of the dreams flowing down when I realized, peering down into my city, that my love for it had grounds. In the smell of the air, the Bridgeport air, the silence, Irving Park silence, the crackling of a spark, the spark of Uptown, the impending fate, fate of the Loop, and the every atom of Lincoln Park, Edgewater, and Lakeview looking out into the water past the depths of the lake, my love has grounds.
      We started heading back home, shuffling against the sidewalk in the cold air. Even though we could have just as easily called a taxi, we yearned for our soles to mark the ground beneath us. We're later than we should be. Doesn't matter. As we both get back home we can hear the jazz bands play their first tune for the day, saying good morning to the city that never sleeps. They knew. The city would always be up before us, and never rest after we left.
     Though the jarring breeze hit my face, I put up the window anyway, to make it easier for the sweet dreams for when they come and find me. I close my eyes to sleep in comfort knowing that when I woke up in the morning, the city will be there to greet me.