Beloved Brooklyn

Dear Brooklyn,

I've loved you since the moment I saw you. Before then. 

I love your rainbow cookies

I love your Chinatown

I love your stoops, your people, your colors, your lights, your dirt, your grime, your magnificance.

I love that you are rolling and rambling and long. I love that it takes me three hours to travel from Canarsie/ Rockaway Park to Bay Ridge

                                                                                                                                

I love your elevated trains, your lullaby trains, your long night trains, your boys.

I love those Polish boys, that Polish boy, the way he laughed, that sound of his. I loved his mother's cooking. 

I see your girls are mommies, that cover their baby strollers in plastic, stuffed into their jeans, hair done, nails done, wondering where the money's from.

I love your "Eternity Moment" perfume in the window. Your Afrikan movie. Your sneakers as status symbol.

I love the barbershop. God how I love it. Sea green & black, orange and brown, painted and lit like a beacon. Wish I had hair that could be done just so you could do it.

I love the light posts long and black on the pink orange sky. I love your tree branches silhoutted. 

I love your hairstyles and the way your black people say things.

I love your black women even though it hurts to watch them so violently exclaiming.

I love your Papa's Fried Chicken & Ice Cream.

I love the neighborhoods. The people hoods. The places and spaces I can travel to in time.

I love that a part of me lives here. A part of me will always live here. 

I love your wandering jews, their hats and their wives. I love their wives. 

Wives, I love your pearl earrings. I love your loafer flats. I love your 3/4 length skirts and your beautiful beautiful baby blankets and bunting. I love your bobbed wigs and your head scarf. I love your carriages and the way your man has one suit, just one, that always looks nice.

I love you all. And, Oh Lord, how I'll miss you--I know it even when leaving hasn't let me. Yet.