Dearest Paul. June and all the months come quickly. Last year's May and the conversations around the bitter and sweet memories May holds for you were poignant, especially in hindsight. Last May’s conversations we had spoke of Pauline, your beautiful mom. Then June came and brought some bliss. A year almost passes and you are so present, sweet angel - still in such ever present sight. My Paul tale began 24 years ago - now almost 25 years ago because the years, the days, the months come quickly.  24 years ago, our friends fixed us up. The attraction was immediate the night we met & led to one of the most wonderful romantic relationships I have ever known. We still talked about our immediate connection decades later. Recently, in fact. Just yesterday, it seems. Our connection was rare. Paul would repeatedly tell me then and just recently the last time we saw each other that my qualities reminded him of his late mother’s. Paul holds so many of my NYC memories & it is hard to separate him from that time. The late 90s. I lived in Chelsea, he in the East Village & we’d walk to each other’s apartments to talk music, life & the children we could have one day. Our relationship ended but we reconnected 24 years later, last year, in Harlem. He had learned perfect Spanish, bought a Harlem brownstone, gotten his Masters in Education & showed me the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls album I had given him for his birthday many years back. He claimed Mick Taylor was the musical backbone of the Stones' seminal work. I said Keith Richards, of course, but such a dance of thought was the joy of any conversation with Paul. I also saw him this past June & it was an incredible time. It was yesterday, my nostalgia insists for again, the days come quickly. His humility about having a great-aunt who married W.E.B. DuBois was attractive. I was enamored by Paul’s voice, his skin tone, his Detroit humor & his intelligence. One of the smartest people I ever met. We met after I had graduated from Columbia University graduate film school and I took him everywhere as I paved my way through NYC. The Oscar party on the Chelsea rooftop of my mentor, film director Jonathan Demme's office. I fell off a chair, I think, as one does on Chelsea rooftops, and looked up to see Paul's outreached hand and care. His Detroit manners and his attentiveness. This attentiveness and authority of thought was so present in Harlem when we walked in an October night last year that betrayed what was to come only a year later. I thought Paul would be forever. I really did. No amount of finite could end this great energy that swallowed up the world around him so eagerly. I had dreamt of Paul 2 days before he died. The message he had for me in the dream was unfinished, incomplete.  There was not enough breath in him to answer to all the questions life pointed at him. So angering. So unfair. There is not more I can say now but this Haitian girl loved that Detroit man something bad. No one has ever had that effect on me. In February of 2024, as I went to officially say farewell to Paul in Detroit & witnessed the Detroit love that penetrated every moment during Paul's celebration of life weekend - his final farewell - I truly understood the vastness of his spirit. His spirit was of the Detroit air, in the grit of that town, the romanticism of its music and the beauty of its people. Of course you are from Detroit, Paul. Where else could someone like you have happened?  New York - my hometown - claims you too for anyone who cannot be contained by small things, small ideas and small experiences thrives in NY. That you did. I love you always, Paul. Always. I am still devastated but thank goodness I had the good sense to reach out 24 years later to hear you say “Hi Sunshine” once again. Repose en Paix, beautiful Paul. My love for you wishes you peace. You did so good here. I listened to my favorite, Detroit’s Smokey Robinson’s “Track of my Tears” the day after you died & I cried for you. I think about you every day & so grateful I walked down those brownstone steps in late 90s Brooklyn & into that car where you were sitting in the back seat, waiting to take me on an unforgettable adventure. Je t’aime. I will never forget you. The last time I saw you, so recently, I spoke of Detroit and you instead said we should go to Haiti. You had such respect for my birthplace. W.E.B. DuBois - your ancestor - traces his roots there. I think he is guiding you to elegant conversations with Dumas, L'Ouverture and Dessalines. You are, undoubtedly, speaking of revolution in music or some conversation where you are the listener, the inquisitor and ultimately the enlightener too. You magnificent, swag-drenched Detroit musketeer. Those ancestors must be proud of you. I imagine your mom, Pauline, is engaging in your heavenly debates as well. You got your wits from her. May 18 is Haiti's flag day. It is in a couple of days. May the ancestors fly celebratory flags high above your soul as you play your music to the sound of some kind of perfect peace. Repose en Paix. Je t'aime. Sois heureux, mon coeur. I love you, Paul. Always. 🙏🏾💔🌺❤️🙌🏾