Peace, Locomotion

Dear Lili,
As you know, in a few days I’m going to be twelve. That means two things:
1. In six weeks, you’ll be nine. 2. In nine more years, I’ll be twenty-one and then I’ll be old enough to take care of you by myself. And when I’m twenty-one and you’re eighteen, I’ll still be your big brother and kind of like the boss of you. But I won’t be mean. And if you want, we can keep living in Brooklyn. Maybe we’ll even find a place near your foster mama’s house because I know you like it a lot over there since it’s right near the park and there’s a cool playground and stuff. When we’re together again, I’ll take you to that playground myself so you won’t be missing it. Even if we’re big, we can still go, right? I see big kids at the one over here sometimes. They hang off the jungle gym and go down the slide. They be acting all crazy and having a real good time.
When we were small, Mama used to take us to the playground over by where our old house was. Since you were still real little, she’d have to go with you down the slide. “Lonnie, you take your sister down the slide now,” she’d say sometimes.
And even though I felt kind of stupid doing that with my friends there watching and singing, Lonnie gotta baby-sit, Lonnie gotta baby-sit, I did it anyways because Mama would get that smile on her face. Daddy used to say, “That’s a smile make a regular man climb Kilimanjaro.”
Back then, I didn’t even know what Kilimanjaro was. Now I do though. It’s a mountain in Africa. And if Mama and Daddy were alive and we were still little kids, I’d take you down that slide a hundred times. And climb Kilimanjaro if Mama asked me to.

Love,
Your brother to the highest mountain, Locomotion