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.
