Sun to Seattle: It's Not You, It's Me.

It's the official: We've broken up.

In hindsight we should have seen it coming.

For weeks now things had been cooling off between us. Sure, the days were bright and blue. Every morning the mountains glowed pink, and every afternoon Puget Sound blossomed with sails. But we could tell there was trouble if we'd really bothered to look.

Each day you were away for a little longer. We kept finding brochures in the mail for Hawaii and Tahiti. If we asked you about it, your answer was always, "Look at those gorgeous dahlias I brought you!"

So we ignored the darkening mornings. We shivered and put on extra layers of cotton and linen, leaving the wool tied firmly in last May's dry-cleaning bags. We dodged the fattening spiders and wiped the dew off the windshield and picked blackberries after work by flashlight.

But today we woke up to find you gone. The bed's cold and the lovely naked sky has pulled on lumpy gray fleece. The furnace kicked in with a faint cough of dust and the cats burrowed further under the covers. The lawn furniture we used to enjoy together is rattling in a cold breeze that's callously flipping the pages of the gardening magazine we left outside last night. There's a rippling curtain of rain on the horizon.


It's over, without so much as a post-it note or a text message of goodbye.

We hastily fold the furniture, drag the potted lemon tree under the eaves and dig the extra blanket out of the linen closet. We look at the sky and mutter, "Sure, we'll give you space. When your phone doesn't ring, it'll be us here in Seattle. But you'll be back."