by Victor Solanoy
a blog post idea taken from my friend Maia
my heart belongs to familiarity. a place where people smile back. people who write back in handwriting. my heart belongs to tall tees, cuffed jeans, thick and winged eyeliner that is as dependable as the homegirls who put it on. a place walkable by low-top chucks, chillen nikes, wide streets, excessive cops in the name of so-called safety. to numbered streets with bars and victorian haunted houses that belong to hard-working crazy families and high school homies. the city that suffocates me the most, learned it like i was exploring a lover’s outlines, spent hours looking up and riding in cars too fast and too expensive for seventeen-year-olds. i remember it most from sidewalk wondering, concrete navigation, following trolley sounds and the scent of tempura batter leading me home from hunger. where kids got high off rolled napkins and behind middle school dumpsters, where my girls and i sugar rushed off of hot chocolate from japantown in our teens and fulfilled the downtown drunchies in our 20s. the place where we moved from one apartment to the next because the neighbor’s son showed himself to me for my friendship. to a room where i sat, wrote and sang to myself, hoping the room itself wouldn’t be upset with me for never leaving it alone.
my heart belongs to my mom’s language, to my mama’s mama’s mama’s mamaland. a place my mind drifts to when i smell anything burnt, sit on a beach where even the sand is darker-skinned, or when i see flies land on my food. to words that misfit english, to slips of tongue, to a people who wait, beg and organize for the same reason. to hopes that one day we could all afford to go back as a family under the guise of vacation when It’s Been Too Long and Because My Mom Cries At Night For The People Who Were Once Here But Are Not Here Anymore So We Came To Remember Them Anyway are not categories under reasons for the visit on embassy papers.
my heart belongs to flight. to putting books and old dairies in the same boxes as high heels and incense. to wine bottles and lipstick left on glasses. to goodnights. to unsteady hearts who are too scared to say. to a place of familiarity. to a place where people will smile back.
janice.
