seduced

This city seduced me,
crept underneath my skin,
sent its tendrils curling
around my heart.

Yes, there are so many things
to hate about LA:
the traffic, the smog, the gloss,
the decadence, the ditzes,
and still
I have come to love this place.

Aren’t we, all of us,
a bit enamored with our Los Angeles?
The nooks and crannies of downtown alleys,
the wide openness of Rampart Boulevard,
the hills we climb up and coast down,
the random bursts of sunflowers that spring up from nowhere,
the “little-“s and “-town”s that are pieces of where we came from and
where we’d like to go, but which remind us
that it is amazing to be
exactly where we are.

This is a city that feeds
those with eyes hungry enough to find
what they want to see–
I came here
starving.