Black heart, not red, because loving New Hampshire is a complicated emotional situation. You pay no sales tax and no income tax, and in exchange you get potholes that could swallow a sedan, a state motto that reads more like a threat, and six weeks of black flies trying to drink your blood in the woods. Winter shows up in October and leaves whenever it feels like it. Mud season is an actual season. That's not love, that's a hostage situation you keep renewing.
But you stay. You stack cordwood, you eat the maple candy that's 97 percent sugar, you drive north for leaf season like everybody else and then complain about the traffic. The heart is black because the summers are gorgeous, the winters are a felony, and you wouldn't move anywhere else out of pure spite.
Soft, broken in from the first wear, and built to survive both 92 degrees and sleet in the same week. Holds its shape, holds its color, holds your grudges.
