The phrase appeared all over the city, chalked on walls, on sidewalks, and even on the Brooklyn Bridge in letter nine feet high.

“I still love you.”

After a couple of weeks, the media got wind of this and being a slow week for news, they aired it.
Do you recall the blonde anchorwoman pleading with the guy who wrote it to come forward. Perhaps she thought she was onto a Pulitzer? Anyhow, even her soulful pleading didn't work. No one came forward.

Every day since a newly chalked phrase was spotted and broadcast.

The world's media sent their camera crews to New York. The chalked phrases became more elaborate. One summers afternoon, a plane drew the phrase in red smoke over the Statue of Liberty. The country went nuts. New York was now the city of romance. The French were really pissed off with that.

One phrase chalked on the Empire State Building made the cover of Newsweek and the NY Times offered a reward to whoever could name either the writer or the girl it was intended for. This prompted a response from the gay community who felt maybe they should get in on a piece of the action and handwriting experts were drafted in to argue over whether the writer was male, female and whether or not he/she was gay/straight. Then the black lobby got onto it and the Puerto Ricans, everyone wanted to be the chalker. Damn, the guy was a genius! Bob Dylan wrote a song about it. Best thing he'd written in years. The consensus was that the writer was male, white and hetrosexual, although no one understood how the so called experts could work that out from the way the letters were leaning.

Rumours abounded that writer was a teacher. It was based on the fact that they have access to chalk, but teachers aren't that clever.


What really bugged people was how the guy could get away with it for so long without being seen. New York is full of cameras. It's like living in an Orwellian state. The only glimpse we got of the guy was a fuzzy, seventeen second black and white film taken from an all night drugstore camera as he chalked the phrase over the door of a government building. It wasn't clear enough to identify anyone.

Then as quickly as it had started, the writings stopped. People wondered what happened. The media pontificated for a few days then turned to another story. Nothing was heard of this again until three weeks later when another message was chalked up on Trump Towers in six foot high letters.

“I don't love you anymore”

After that there was nothing. People cried on the streets. Romance died. The divorce rate soared. Hollywood made a film of course, but it quickly went to video. David Duchovny wasn't right as the MC. He wasn't angry enough.

I wish I'd been that guy though. I still love you.

…and I even hated my shoes

for the stories they'd tell on me:

mouths gaping, tongues wagging

after midnight, calling out

to the overburdened dresser

half opened closet door

spilling all my day's mistakes,

missteps, wrong turns, trips

down streets and alleys

where I did not belong,

when I betrayed them

propped them idly up

during working hours,

went bare or stocking-footed

at midday, made them wait,

overturned, under some

unfamiliar bed --

dangerous, these

piss-elegant loafers,

stiff, unfriendly boots,

treacherous slip-ons, battered

fish heads refusing to turn

their blind eyes from my sins,

unstrung laces twisting

dreads gone wild

hated them all --

run down, walked over

curled up, scuffed

loathed them all the way down

to their filthy, lying, souls.