If you had come last week, oh it was so cold, it's been cold for weeks. They've all said it, but since I arrived has not the city been all kinds of summer peak? Warm and gentle, people dotting the shoreline and spreading out on any available grass? Summer in Sweden is magic, you fall for it every time without fail. We go out for breakfast in the mild morning sunlight on the square, look at the tan Scandinavians and try to catch up on too many loose threads. I walk along the water's edge to find a spot in the never-setting sun, but the people are everywhere: quiet, calm, anxiously absorbing the few weeks of summer that must carry them through the dark misery to follow.
But it is too beautiful, too overwhelming, too serene. You stumble in finding your place; they've held that nook for you, kept it soft and warm for your return but you are too crooked to get comfortable. Remember those first trembling days of June, years ago now, when Stockholm was new: filled with potential but sullied by being the place that wasn't New York.
I don't think I ever gave you a chance.
I still don't know if we deserved one.
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