Detroit love notes

#1.summer with my legs bare and hair pulled back tight, sweat-licked & wind-blown, Fort street, potholes and rubble crumbs and dusky sunset. The edge of the world and I’m biking into it, towards home. alone on what Brian once told me was the deadliest pedestrian avenue per capita in all of America, thinking maybe I’ll have kids one day, maybe I’ll publish a book, maybe I’ll tell someone I love them. Maybe none of that matters, though, when I can turn these wheels and watch the sky breathe over St. Anne’s, when I can feel every bit of this in slow motion and present tense.

#2 the Canadian cops are writing up a missing life preserver. I am unbearably present, falling off my tightrope. crush pooling, deflating the balloon wall that hides my soft spots. waiting for you to kiss me, wondering if you’ll have me, clenching your hand. detroit smiles across the river and my heart fills up another liter. Girls in hijabs. Family eating a picnic dinner. Slow air. Yellow light. wait, let me cross this off my bucket list.

#3 The 4th of July when Brian’s brisket wasn’t done until midnight and we laughed and laughed and went to bed hungry and ate smoked meat with our fingers for breakfast the next morning. The colder than it should’ve been Saturday afternoon we laid in the front yard and watched the men with metal detectors treasure hunt our median. The bottle of red wine I drank by the shot glass as I listened to Alex sing in our living room for the first time. The creaky staircase I fell down weekly. the bus stop I learned to love. The two years of my life I built from scratch, the home that cradled the best version of us.

For 2 months afterward I will drunkenly send Ubers to 378 w grand blvd and walk the three blocks to my new house. Some big piece of me never left. That girl sits on the front porch. Is afraid of kitchen moths. Laughs loud.