Ode to 9th & O NW – Washington D.C.

You hundred-year-old
bastion of merriment
You crumbling icon
You hollow walls
& sacrosanct floors
You kitchen where rice was burned
& whiskey spilled
You wondrous accident
You ephemeral cacophony
You crumbled piece of adulthood
You first taste of adulthood
You made laughter omnipresent
Wrapped seven of us within your
walls, locked the door
& swallowed the key
You roommate shuffleboard
You millennial experiment
You eye of the gentrified storm
You still tryna be Duke Ellington
in a world full of yoga studios
Three years in your grasp
& we watched them turn
the Boys & Girls Club
into happy hour
It's something about how you sit
on the corner, at the intersection
of where I learned to tell someone
they made me feel like everything
& nothing all at once
How you made growing
up existential
How one can be lulled into nostalgia
by the clamor of an audacious love.