Love Letter to the Mississippi River

Seeing as it is the only relationship in which I am ever 100% comfortable, I sat down and wrote my first love letter last night to the Mississippi River.
Since It doesn't have an address, I thought I'd just post the letter here and hope it gets to the right place.

To My River:

Can you hear across the mountains when I yell at the traffic? Does my voice carry the 2000 miles through my car windows to shake your waters under the dam? It always happens over the cement creek they call a river—we stop and I stare at the vast dry walls for riverbanks. My heart is thirsty, and even though I’m happy, I don’t yell at the Toyotas, I yell for the right sort of water. The water muddied with the stories of America, the stories of my life before I became Samantha. You knew me as Sam. Sam without question. You never asked what I preferred. You just said so and it was. Nothing here, not even the mountains, can have that sort of assertiveness.

To be clear, I do not miss anything beyond your banks. Nothing that cannot come to me, anyway. The streets were no better, and the people certainly lacked the superficial West Coast Warmth. Superficial used to be a bad word. Now it is a way of life. Never dig too deep because there’s nothing but sand anyway. I think people’s personalities reflect their rivers. I have a certain depth, a certain muddiness, a certain great big connective purpose because I am rooted along your banks. While I have never been happier, I wish most days I could sit and tell my stories along your shore. Couldn’t you reroute my way? I know you’d like it here. I know they’d like you. Everyone likes everything in Los Angeles. But I think you inspire a deeper fondness; one worthy of Kerouac’s ravings, of Twain’s prose, of my own pathetic ramblings.

Even though Los Angeles is my home now, I will forever be a tree planted by a river’s banks, conscious and grateful for strong, healthy roots. You, and you alone, give me reason to return. Perhaps it is crazy to say this to a constantly changing body of water, but I love you. And then again, perhaps it is my favorite relationship because it can never change. We are always going to be Sam along the River; we are always going to hold each other’s stories. So I love you a hundred times over and miss you a hundred times more. Keep flowing, but be kind this year—keep the floods at bay. No one likes them but me, and I’ve already checked it off my list of disasters. Your path is sure. Mine is coming along nicely. Perhaps they will cross, and I will become another tributary in your long and perfect history.

Love,

Sam