I am not sure what this means.

I am tempted to do what I do with information I don't want to deal with, and push it in the very very far corners of mind.

I should attempt to understand this, but I am not sure if the implications are even realistic, I am not sure if this an exception, and I am not sure if the factors construing who I am would even bother addressing this.

Happiness is ....

... adventure and passion and inspiration.

Therefore, she lived happily ever after.

The word 'freedom'

More and more,

I recognize that bodies are inconsequential.

You, and your body, are lovely.

But more than this-- your mind captivates me with its complexities--

the way it betrays you, or you betray it.


I am always thinking, how can you let me know these things about you? Or more accurately, how do you give me the privilege of knowing you? The intricate far-away things that reside in the mysteries of you. The ones that are hidden behind clusters of veins and capillaries. Behind the bronchial tubes and even further than the depths that your lungs have capacity to inhale. Further still.

Count. One. Two.

How long can you hold it in?

Mysterious. I never could know and feel all of what you have.

More than this, I do not know how to give back in the same way other than choosing apt times to reveal factoids of this thing or that thing that I was or am or feel.

But always with great care and intention. Always with an intentional gauge on what I am revealing, what it could mean, and what you could do with the information.

Will you weaponize it?
Will you stop loving me, and turn who I am into something that could hurt me?
Will you stop loving me and simply let this investment of heart and time become something that sets behind your heart instead of in it? Calcified into a structure resembling a body?

But you, have nothing but trust in what you reveal. Such abandon and honesty and disregard for the possibilities of pain.

I have a lot to apologize for, I feel. Or people to apologize for.

How much of the hatred that is rampant is mine to be responsible for?

I am embarrassed at the ease in which we celebrate the death of a stranger, laws that limit freedoms of people we know nothing about, the way we tout 'love' when it is only a thing we seem to be masquerading-- with strings and costs and dollar bills attached on the other side of the thin mask.

More than this, withdrawing and setting boundaries and painting layers and layers of lines on top of lines-- I feel coerced into apologizing for this.

Today I am excited for the future.

I am so blessed, and I am so aware of it.

I have so many people I love, and I have people that amaze me surrounding me, yet I am not trapped in any way.

I am happy, and open, and free to follow those dreams of mine literally to the ends of the earth.

Not a bad place to sit at 24.

October 2

I cannot sleep again. It is 4:08 am, and I have class at from 8:30 am to 6:00 pm tomorrow.

It is undeniable, this time of year is on my mind.

I have come a very long way from last year. I have learned some things. I have packed memories away. Losing Rachael is something I will never completely recover from. Losing her, and not knowing why, is even more difficult.

I loved her as much as I have ever really loved anyone.

She taught me some things, and maybe not lovely things, but important none-the-less. Of course they go against all my tendencies of fostering relationships that are real, but it is realistic to at least consider:

• There is no one who you can put all your self in without risking losing too much if they ever decide to leave.
  
• Anyone can leave/be taken at any time.
• Can you still be whole after they do?

I am not ever going to write about this again.

Love, and War, and I *

Sometimes we

understand that one cannot be

without the others.

I stepped out alone with just Love

and was constantly looking over my shoulder

waiting for War to come looking for us.

so then I became merely afraid, and realized this wouldn't do,

so joined up with War, hoping this would bring peace.

But all War and I ever did was wait, hoping that just being together,

Love would appear.

But whenever War was around, all we talked about was Love coming someday,

but Love never arrived.

so I tried leaving Love and War to their own antics, and wandered about alone,

with nothing to fight for, nothing to fear, nothing to hope for, nothing warring or loving in me.

Ah, but this was impossible,

what is left, then,

without the tearings of these?

*Shameless title adapted from Avett Brothers

micro vs. macro

people sleep on the streets, he said. “It’s not very hygienic.”

maybe if the dirt or steps, broken marble or broken concrete

or whole brick

was scrubbed with bleach

and her hair was cleaned, and she smelled like mangoes and jasmine

and her clothes wrapped more neatly around the thin of her waist

maybe

if the dirt was swept vigorously away (always so gentle, our attempts to sweep you away)

our attentions would drift from bones and flesh and

the hair matted neatly to the side of your face--

and we would realize there is more broken here.

If every human life is created and designed, each person is a short story or chapter in who the person of God is.

Who you are to me, is God choosing to be vulnerable.


I am not affected by the criticism of my mind, my body, my choices. I haven't really had my feelings hurt for awhile (back to that odd observational tendency).


But when you said all you want is another day like the day you felt wanted, it broke my heart.



I cannot tell you how much you deserve, and how little you settle for.

You, who are infinitely precious, you who have been robbed of what should have always been yours--

You, who are a chapter written by the God I love,


How little you want, and how little you accept, and how much more you deserve.

Cost benefit analysis pt II

I have a peculiar numb feeling, which I am unaccustomed to.

Observational, almost. The anthropologists would be proud.

I have taken up smoking clove cigarettes on my rooftop, with my nerdy headphones and loud music (unhappy cilia everywhere). Very un-me. Cancer. Public Health. Not something that can continue too long unfortunately. The neighbors must think I am odd and deeply hypocritical.

But I like them. I like the sweet spicy smell.

I like the air, and swirling, and light, and the way the light mixes with the smoke-- and the way the smoke burns my lungs, and the way it swirls again and disappears into the sky as I breathe it out slowly and deliberately.

This numb feeling-- odd. I don't mind it. Watching my skin get cold, or my body get hungry. Watching my mind get tired, bored. Watching my lungs breathing.

There is the temptation to remain exactly this way. Feeling numb? This could be powerful. There is some freedom to this that I have not ever had.


I have always known I am all or nothing, and have not much experimented with this other extreme.

I believe in deep joy, peace, happiness-- but you have to decide what you want and there are consequences to indecisiveness; and there are consequences to passion. I have to decide if it is worth it (of course I know the answer, I would hope).

(knowing isn't the same as deciding).

cost-benefit analysis.

My dreams (the real ones, not the metaphorical ones)

are filled with horrifying things.

I explain this, when I mean just to keep mouth shut and listen.

Instead, I start explaining how I am awake and aware and it is terrifying to know you are only dreaming, and that there is a whole world you can control when you sleep.

You smile and nod and I know I should really stop (it is a bit strange after all).

But I cannot stop. Dream after dream recorded in my head like vivid and terrible memories;
-- I know -- you must be thinking: This one's a little strange.

Except, you like me more for this. And I like you less because--who likes such strange people?

The night used to be a friendly place,
and the faster that we drove along whatever road we decided to take,
the faster my mind raced, and I was only happy that you were driving
(I get lost).

The air stayed fresh and we were anything but suffocated.
and I rolled the window down, and you turned the music up,
and we decided if this would never end, we could be happy, maybe.

So I held my breath and turned blue, and you swerved because you thought maybe I would hold my breath too long--
-- (it's a biological reflex to keep breathing I said)

but you never believed me.

Today it rained, and I heard the sounds on my rooftop, and I was content.
I heard your song,
and I held my breath,
and I was happy, maybe.

(I get lost).

There is a way you glow,
wrapped in sheets (entwined in them).

Pale and thin, the skin is delicately translucent,
like you are about to break out of whatever shell it is you are confined to.

Collective memory tells us we too will be old, --but time, there is so much time (you always say to me).

I hate to disenchant you with this: ah, my dear, there is not.

Don't let this shock you, I see it even now. The beginnings in your eyes, it is harder now to ignore. Why do you always look so tired?

Why are you always watching me? It is hard sometimes to know the difference between what is me and what is this empty dying thing. Where does it end, and I begin? What are you looking at after all?

This empty, dying thing is beautiful (you always say to me) but,
I know it is only a failing thing,

and I am only more and more aware of the confines of what a body has to offer, however brilliant.

When the window is open, and there are noises from this or that town, I hope that I will at least remember this--

and I hope that you will remain unafraid.

New life philosophy

Going with the flow aka whatever aka chillaxin' aka meh aka brush it off and just float along for a bit > Taking everything/everyone/every-choice so seriously.

Can't be too bad for awhile, right?

It is a privilege to use 'love' so often in poetry

It is easy to see how one could become wrapped up in being delighted.

Oh I love this, possibility of leisure in the beautiful things.

That certain distance about the ones I love remembering ones they loved.
Loving (words: love; loved). Such prevalence and privilege;

The possibility of taking it, cocooning a lifespan in it.

Ah, and you, Kindness. You delight me. And I desperately want you to surround me.
Because when you are evident, there is a lightness to me, and there is a Me that could live surrounded with your consequences.

And this me is an artist. She is an author. She is married to a good man, with kind children.

These children: They love to learn. They share their lunches with the sad ones. They play music that makes everyone listen.

This me, she grows old, and does not notice, because time is on her side. She paints until the day she dies painlessly, delighted, few lines on her face, gripping the hand of someone who loves her, proceeded by many she loves.

But this me-- she chooses not to invite the stranger into her home.

She never
spun that stranger around.

She never
swept away his mask and begged him to let her take some of the darkness away.

The one walking away from her.
The tired one, matted in blood, hungry.
The one with the torn boots and a damaged heart.

"Do not forget me," he cries desperately.
"You promised.'

Cruelty is

It is hard to imagine
why if something is alive and bursting, sizzling, seething

more alive than all the living things have ever been,
leaking all the sounds that you could not have created

out of your own heart and mind;

if you can look out, bare,
and find you are looking in.

The way it is when I am not I.

why,

if you can taste the salt and the slight sweetness on the tip of your lips,
and your body is buzzing and reeling from the constant realization that this is good:



You would turn to the colorless, the tasteless.

So this secret you take with you,


and even if you choose the colorless, the tasteless

You, advocate of choice.


Dearest friend,
You have taken this from me.

Things about Iowa that make me happy:

My family is there.
I can walk around as much as I want at night and feel safe.
The air that I can breathe and breathe some more.
Simplicity, sky, stars, sitting on my grandparents deck and just enjoying their company.

Ah but always always always the question: is it enough?

Being a woman sucks aveces.

It might be fairly naive, but I suppose I didn't realize that as a woman alone, living and working among the people I want to, I am constantly and will always be in danger. I have taken dangerous risks in the past while traveling, but I am much more aware of it here-- mostly perhaps because there is no real choice in those risks-- it is implicit in my neighborhood.

I dislike the mistrust I have developed. However, it gets old, always being so careful. It is in fact, something I despise. How am I supposed to live spontaneously when I am always thinking about what time it will be dark, when I am blatantly followed in broad daylight, when people grab my arm in the street? There is no subtlty in the things people say to me. When they say rapes are under-reported, how can I be surprised with the policemen leer and say 'Come home with me, I will take care of you'? I cannot imagine living this way, not trusting anyone! I am also not surprised at the law-suits being brought forth from past Peace Corps volunteers that were assaulted and treated as if what happened to them was their fault-- a glass of wine, walking in the dark, trusting a stranger, not always always having someone to walk home with.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been in situations where I had to make a choice, and neither choice was a good one. Accept the ride home with the strange but nice guy also waiting for the buses that have stopped running after a concert or get stuck in rioting at midnight in a bad part of town? Take the bus all the way to the city I wasn't planning on going to because there was a 2 hour traffic jam and it is dark all of a sudden, or get off the bus in the middle of no-where and flag down a random stranger on a motorcycle? Get off the only guagua going home on a Sunday, or hope the guy waving a gun in the next seat doesn't turn around and force me off the guagua? Pay 7 bucks to wave down a taxi, or walk six blocks with a group of guys following me and hope they're just trying to go home too?

I make extreme gambles every day here, and I am very very aware of it. I am also aware of how selfish it would be to get hurt because I was stupid.

But obviously-- again, naive to think that 1) being a foreigner and 2) being a woman would be a winning combination of anonymity. However, it is slightly discouraging and sobering, because it has implications for what I want to do with my life versus what will keep me alive long enough to actually live it.

maybe some days,
you fret as the dreams drip from your subconscious
and onto your wrists
in the form of permanent brown script,
vertically inscribed in a language you haven't really learned;
but tumbles from your tongue.

they ask you to explain,
and you glance in panic at the pearls twisted twice around your wrist.

you stretch on the beach, until you forget the demands.

"Who wears pearls at the beach, and where does it come from, and what does it mean?" they say

you chip at the polish on your nails, more confused.

"Me, and nowhere, and why does it have to mean anything?"

Mountains By Jarabacoa

The chubby baby is covered in pox. "Have they been sick in the past 12 months?" I ask. It seems like only a formality, as the young mother reaches for her four year old, and yanks up the dirty red shirt. His dark skin is speckled with oozing wounds.

"They are always sick," you say. "We are always sick."

"How old is the mother of this house?" I ask. 29, you say. Your husband is still in Haiti, you say.

You look at your older sons, and they are combing their hair into corn-rows. The oldest looks away when you say this.

"How many children?"

"Six."

I look around, and there are three boys, and two babies. The girl in font of you is holding your youngest, and he is crying. You look to us for permission, and we nod. You put him on your right breast.

"Two are still in Haiti," you say.

The girl holding your baby watches me, and smiles politely. 12, 13 years old.

My French is poor, but your 4-year-old covered in pox gives me a weak smile-- ça va?

I am not outraged.
If these were me, wouldn't I maintain outrage?

We are always sick but,
"They are always sick," I say.

A lover who failed

crosses the street, decidedly alone or unalone

depending on the time of day or unday.

He touches the soft hair of pretty girls, blue eyes and brown eyes and eyes that have decidedly shut.

He whisks them along with stories, and champagne, and an arm to lean on when they tire of simply

walking alone.

The lines around his eyes give him away when he looks down, out of the stench

the whole world of fruity smoky perfume and names he has stopped caring to remember, as he glances at his worn leather watch,

every once in awhile considering the time.

First church service after Katrina

One time,

I drove all night and into the next day,

with a car full of strangers.

there were fish on the ground,

and skeletons of houses and creatures,

plastered on roads and balanced on the tops of tops.

If stories are enough to cripple me,

I expected devastation of more than buildings.

to my great surprise,

I found music.

ah, and see they knew of what they sang.

'You give and take away. You give and take away. Still my heart will choose to say,

Blessed be the name of the Lord.'

Sometimes after so much time surrounded with the all the bleak things
you pretend the sun is meant to make you, aware-alive.

(enjoy)
joy
knowing that you know
and I know
who is hurting now
and you curl
your finger around
my thumb.
and in this,
I know you will
stand in the streets
and protect the cities
I somehow grew fond of;

Maybe you will play your old guitar,
and sing of ways we could
learn how to be
human again.

The first song is just for practice,
and your voice cracks a little,
you smile shyly
at the boys holding machetes
and the girls with baskets and babies.

You hum a bit at first,
and the men with guns and chains,
sway in uncertainty.

Then you throw back your head and
cry unabashedly
of the way we have given up pieces of us
and along the way lost more than we had.

My cities stand still; at least agreeing to listen.

Perhaps this is as close to joy as we could be,
today.

Thank you, I whisper; these are mine.

The boiling inside was met with dullings.
Just press it away
and describe a memory of a memory for posterity.

Surround it with gentle voices and gentle polite applause,
and turn this truth of what is happening now
into something sanitized and manageable
justifiable.

you vs. yourself

Always this choice,
you or me.
Ah and, is this
really freedom?

When I know you
are everything precious
and made,
and worth all there is,
or will ever be?

Where is the choice in this,
don't frighten me
with wasting so much.

Maybe they looked and did not understand this,
and 25 years went by,
so you looked in the mirror and met yourself with a blank stare

Face. Eyes. Hair. Lips. A sum of some
parts that make worth.

Darling do not make the mistake of the broken-hearted.

You walk into the flurries.
Every morning it's dark,
and every time you
glimpse at the sky, you see it
again.

The way that it is always
so thick. You drown it out
or drown it in,
as long as the day is done;

Sigh, trip, and fall into the next one
wasting your moments planning your moments
Until something ignites you,
and the greys of your day
burn like the desperate shout for someone to only
walk by and touch their skin.

What do you expect, burying all the burning things?
Don't they deserve to wail that you have forgotten?

You feel, or have felt, the numbing pressure.
The unspeakable things, the things too dark to pull out of the collapsed
corners of your heart.

You know that the pretty words, the pat answers and cliches will never be enough to mend these things. That there are wounds that need more than truth,
losses that need more than condolences and empty assurances of future goodness.

Yet through this you say, "I choose to believe. I choose to serve, and I will remain faithful."

And when my eyes and my heart are closing, because I just don't understand what Love looks like anymore, and is the Love I have been shown only a lie,
or the rumblings of chance
you take me by the arm and spin me around slowly.

"Don't forget, it is all Love, after all."