London,
It’s been three months since I last spent time with you. Twelve weeks since I’ve walked your congested streets and navigated your labyrinthine underground. Nearly 100 days since I heard the familiar sounds, smelled the familiar odors and admired the familiar views that I called home for four and a half months.
Leaving you was hard. At the time, it was a bittersweet goodbye, but I was ready to return to my true home to be with my family. Even though you took me in — a foreigner in a foreign land — we knew that the day would come when you would have to let me go again. Now, as I prepare to return to Fairfield, people are asking me if I’m ready. I tell them, “Yes, but it’s weird.”
Every time, I am met with the same puzzled expression. “I missed Fairfield’s campus,” I explain, “but it feels like I should be returning to London.” Recognition envelops their features, much like I was enveloped by the throngs of people each day I walked by St. Pancras International. You know the crowds there stop to take photos of the hotel that looks like a castle. Although I eventually ceased to take photos of its towers and turrets, my eyes were drawn to the building that shined like a beacon whenever I feared I wandered slightly off course.
London, it’s now more than 2,100 hours since I last witnessed your beauty, wondering how I could be so lucky to have the opportunity to live in an incredible city. Sure, the living quarters were small, the sidewalks were narrow and the bus routes were beyond me, but that was your charm. You were my first city. Before you, I thought that I would despite cities. You changed that easily.
Eight months ago, I offered my heart to a city that is now nearly 3,500 miles away.
It is London’s to keep.
