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We entered Chicago at eight in the evening when the sky’s twilight was wilting, a steely, steely, blue that should eventually turn black entirely because that’s what it’s like in Chicago: it follows a different color spectrum. I thought to myself, very distinctly – in the moment I woke up – “Chicago is God’s loneliest soldier.” The first thing I noticed was the Sears Tower standing over the South Wacker building, and together they resemble a knight leaning on his sword, genuflecting not out of respect but out of exhaustion, necessity. Chicago is exhausted. It’s a biting black all year round.  Chicago isn’t Barack Obama, Chicago is Barack Obama’s peacoat.

And I wonder how so many choose it. Chicago has become the city people move to because New York is just so typical. That’s it, really. Chicago is alternative NYC. “Yeah, I’d like living in Chicago.” I’ve never heard anyone say anything else about Chicago.

Two of Kate’s best friends from Baltimore moved to Chicago. They wanted her to come with.

David wants to go to school in Chicago soon, for music.

The Chicago Greyhound station is, in case you were wondering, just like the city itself: overly crowded with miserable overcoats all short of breath, every surface covered in a silver or black glaze, unnecessarily cumbersome, a junkyard womb filled with lost, floating body parts. The food was terrible and overpriced; it’s like that at all Greyhound stations, but especially here.

A whirlwind of black clouds belongs over the city at all times: it’s where the souls end up. Do people here look at each other? Let’s forget Chicago.