"St. Paul is where the curtains of my life opened wide,
and where I ran back when for Zelda I cried.
A striking Montgomery gal who desired to wed wealth,
who danced right into this writer’s heart with stealth.
Before Zelda was Princeton where I lost college and loves,
until Fort Leavenworth’s military chose me to wear the lieutenant gloves.
Europe was good to my career as Paris birthed Gatsby the great,
but overseas began putting my dear Zelda in an unstable mental state.
My love broke and spent the rest of her life in one of Asheville’s cages,
and I turned to Hollywood to screen-write my own life’s next pages.
Zelda spent the rest of her days admitted until she burned behind her locked door,
and I perished of a heart attack in the apartment of my paramour.
Not even allowed to rest together, my late wife separated against my will,
but I fortunately got a plot next to my father in the heart of Rockville."
Between his birth in St. Paul, Minnesota to his burial in Rockville, Maryland, Fitzgerald has the privilege to see many cities inside the U.S. and overseas. He met his wife, wrote novels and short stories, failed and quit jobs, and tragically died all in different cities around the world. Although not getting to travel overseas while in the Army was one of his biggest regrets, Fitzgerald did make it there to write works such as The Great Gatsby after Zelda married him. This is a take on Fitzgerald's healing list of the cities he would write about in his lifetime.
