The death of the home town

Dear Old Hometown,
So we've been apart for some odd years now, and things have changed between us, for better, never worse. Hometown I must use your name though I wish no harm upon thee: you are West Palm Beach, Florida. You were my place of growing. My first school play (I was a house), my first drive in a car (a parking lot, it didn't go so well), the first day in school, first time I hit a baseball, a raquetball was hit within you too. There are too many firsts to name but you get the idea.
Hometown you are quite seductive. You've sent many a man and woman to your salty soil. Some find peace in the newness of you. In the difference that you offer. Different from other such towns that have opened up their souls to the challenges of facing the truth. You bring the heat, literally, all year long. Most find you in a longing for warmth. They had found themselves in the cold grip of a normal winter and had decided that the cold shouldn't hold them any longer. Boo fucking hoo.
I left you for a more northern southern climate. Still trapped in the same state but, different by varying degrees (again literally).
I was pushed away by your heat but, driven away by your whorish desire to have all of New England be your groom. So I moved north with a desire to find where the center of me would live in peace. I didn't find my soul without you but, only a loneliness that begged for a different approach.
A few different northern cities were tried but none offered the family and friends that you provided. It made me wonder if it was you that I hated or if I was just lost in the indecision of youth. The endless cycle of happiness in the beginning only to find uncertainty in the end. I'm not upset at you any longer. You gave me a place that could harbor my tendencies, a place where a young soul could find a type of love that only a youthful type could know. Hometown I found love in you like a high school finds a bully to keep the smart kids in line. Something that makes you wish you never had what you have but can't get away from what you are. I might never find the love that I found in myself in some different town. But then again you never become yourself again, you only become an older, wiser version. One that doesn't give in to the ordained world of hope, only to the loose world of self satisfaction. Hometown your not the reason for my failures or grandeur. Yet, I am who I am because of your fences. I'm no free dog that wanders through the street searching for scraps. I remained chained to your tree of suburban sprawl. I only go outward not upward. I feel the ocean is my border and the swamp is where I end. The murkiness of the pool I swim is no different then the old end of the wasteland that you have let become.
I wish for you to reclaim your old being. The endless sawgrass fields that covered the land and hid the egrets and turtles. The lake of Okeechobee that once took the lands that have now become houses and new development. The malls that cater to the pristine people that have money to spend but, not a thought to give. The street lights that are a shade to dark for the sea turtle to see. The old place that my grandma once knew.
Dear West Palm, I love the grains of sand that whisper through my toes as walk on your beach. I love the wings in the sky that come to you when the northern climate would claim their youth. I love when you kiss my back as I look away from your bright sky.
But your beauty has gone too far. You can't have everyone. You've taken our old folks from the places they made great. You've made it so lucrative that their kids come down for a research job of skin cancer effects on the Irish immigrants descendants.
I'll never be without you, you live to deep in my imagination. I can't go through a night of dreams without you sliding in.Your good, maybe an indian curse that waits till you get older before it unleashes its worst. But I love you all the same. This place that most don't know but, will forever live in my brain. I will leave love with you and hope you spread it again. Your a field slashed and burned that will always make more crops for the spring.