My Brooklyn

My body was bred in an environment of silence. 

For as long as I remember, this deafening silence was a lullaby that my ears listened to and a tune that my soul craved.

I knew nothing else.

When escaping the heavy orange bricks that make up my apartment, peace fills me. Paradise soon follows in its footsteps.

When escaping, the void left in me, which was hand dug by the ones that I love, becomes filled.

Filled with laughter from the ones that truly see me. 

Filled with the smell of my Brooklyn air.

MY brooklyn. 

As I walk through the borough that I love, I forget the pollution in my mind and body that I spent so long living off of. 

Like a drug. 

I walk to the pier to remember what it feels like to be free. To get out of my head and allow my body to be swallowed by the sound of the waves dancing. 

I walk to the train station and I grant the screaming and growling of the train’s wheels to course through my veins. It’s a reminder to me that silence, the silence that I learned to digest, is a poison. 

My neighborhood defines me. It hardened me while softening me at the same time. 

It’s filled to the brim with concrete and poverty and is saturated with gentrification. 

Soon, my paradise is turned into a memory and I head home.

My “home” is one of many complexities. In some sense, it’s the embodiment of resilience. The thing that encompasses a multitude of triumphs.

The heavy orange bricks that make up my apartment are a part of me, but it is an element that I’m learning to reject.