Dear Binghamton,
 

You don’t owe me anything.

When I first came to you, I had nothing more than a Subaru full of my most prized possessions and my two daughters. We scurried toward you in the night’s dead to escape what had been my prison for the last six and a half years, living out a sentence for the crimes I had committed in my youth and leaving with scars, holes and a battered ego all held together with the thinnest threads of string crafted out of the budding love I was growing for myself.

You were both my end and my beginning.

You taught me love. Joy. Righteous anger. You opened my eyes to what the world is actually like. In you, I rediscovered my passion for music and poetry. I found love in the little things. Blue birds chirping outside my windows and opening peanut butter jars for squirrels. The dark eyes of a loving man. The betrayal of a new friend. Beautiful moments that all bring me to a place inside myself that I would never have found before.

You made me learn safety in myself. To practice discernment, to use my voice for love.

Binghamton, you have taught me so much. More than Hardeeville, Baltimore, Silver Spring and Columbia combined.

Binghamton, you made me come alive.
 

Thank you,

Miss. Imani