Several tilting "condemned" posters plaster the front door

Aluminum foil covers windows busted out by a meth lab gone wrong

Like silver fillings scattered throughout a tweeker's half-smile
This is the home I've come back to

Where people park in the park
And sit in their cars 'till its dark
smoking and wishing their diabetic ankles would stop swelling
while a 62 oz Big Sip keeps them company
And their phone is a constant beacon reminding them they're not alone
Despite their loneliness
This is the town where European is considered a language
and saying an uncle moved to South America is as specific as you need to be
And New York is a place of impatience and Times Square shopping adventures
This is the home where crows by the thousand stare down at folks in all-day sleepwear
sitting on front porches
watching the cars go by

A city where you measure who's coming and going by who is parked where
Your car a permanent calling card

Where gaggles of hip-heavy soccer moms speed walk the mall
and leave their teenage daughters at home
for the midnight showing of the last chapter in the Twilight saga
This is where you insist everybody speak "Amurican"
And where black people can be seen driving pickup trucks with confederate flag bumper stickers
And where pizza is never folded in half before being eaten

This is the reminder of all that I left behind, for good reason.
It's calling home by a new name:

Brooklyn.