Of ears

And what are the words of permanence.

Of disarray

The things that lay thick and syrupy against a sticky August windshield. The sweat beams on your forehead and tattered droplets of rain congregate in the shadows.

You can never take it back.

You can only say

I’m sorry. 

I didn’t mean it

I changed my mind

I was wrong

Forgive me.

But the ears that have bent under the breadth and the pain.

You can never remove the weight of your words.

And don’t I know it better than you.

Haven’t I heard the thing that rips your frame from its bones

Your soul a wry torrent coercing and staggering in the sunlight 

Caught on a limb, on a dime, in the heated breeze.

And haven’t I been that? That sickening angle. The phrase that bleeds in your mouth as your lips come across your teeth.

You don’t even mean it. As you lose your train of thought.

But he deserves it.

You should mean it.

You should be able to mean it.

And that is the truth.

Though you love him too much to ever want him to hurt that badly.

The way you have hurt.

And that, is the truth.

And the thing that should never be said. 

It’s too awful. Kindness will swallow you whole little girl.

And will fear. And love. And rage.

Be quieter than you have been.

And wait. 

Wild love

We’ll call it a summer of wild love

Of reckless decision making

And frightful abandonment.

A hollow. Swallowed up by darkness and crying out with bold and fearless screeches and yodels into the nighttime.

The cracks in the valley

The light shining in

Losing all kinds of love

Fighting desperately for yourself.

Your self.

Alone not lonely. 

Lonely, not alone. 

And one. 

That heart within my heart. 

That permanent marker. 

That beautiful soul.

 That dear and broken creature. 

Throw the driftwood into the river, and watch it float down stream. Fluid, out of control. Perfectly spiraling. 

Is it safe, does it matter if it knows where it will land?

Or only that it will arrive in one piece. 

Grow

Can you be quiet

Can you watch the blades of grass 

through the squinting winter sunlight 

out of the periphery of your mind 

as they teeter in an easy breeze

All the while knowing 

Their only thing is to grow

Hi moon

Hi moon

Is it the change of the seasons

Or that my heart feels too unstable to move forward

Too shifty. Shifting. Unabashedly crying out that it would be different

That you would be

And that we can change

Like the moon,

All the time.

But constant too. 

Mawmaw

Walking through an antique mall is like spending time with my grandmother again. 

Smells that I attributed to her, warmth and dust and perfume. Old wood and dried book pages. 

Fake flowers and crystal stemware.

Walking from booth to booth, the air stifled and earthy,

I want to reach out and hold her hand. 

I can hear her laugh. I can see her face. 

I can turn and say hey Mawmaw,

What’s this really worth?

And with a turn of her heels and a twist of her head, she would respond,

I don’t know girl, let’s see what we can make them do. 

Living

We pass by

In the shadows

And as the day turns to night,

And the night again to day

Today, we say, we will be what we do.

And what will we do?

And what if, for even a breathe,

We could see ourselves as God does

Not built on our accomplishments

But in His image 

Beautiful by design

Broken by the world

Broken, beautiful, and just

Living. 

Illness

I am a live,

And for why?

For what minutes, seconds, days, of lives of trees are we here 

And if, knowing that we do not know,

Do we not just bend down.

Do we not throw our hands out and cry to the heavens and to the fields

That though we do not know, 

We are alive. A life, watching the water flow over the rocks

Watching the sun fold under the forest. 

Watching the seasons change. Feeling. 

Feeling God. Feeling everything.

Never knowing. But wanting to. 

Lost and found

Where do we find intention. And what does it mean to be intentional. To have good intentions. For me, it's no more than trying to get a few more ducks in the row, every day. Regardless of external expectation or judgment. Where I should be by now, or how far I have to go.

I try and breathe. I settle into the relativity of all things.

I thank God, no matter what.

And I check one more thing off the list.

Thank. Full.

I'm really proud of having a beautiful mother. And I tell anyone who will listen, how good my father is.

You know what I mean? That simple and old terminology.

He is good.

He's honorable, honest. A straight shooter. Talented, funny, and smooth.

But the two of them. My mother with her quick wit and infectious cackle.

And my dad. His handshake is so warm and his anecdotes roll off the tongue like a secret.

Like a secret you want to hold close to your chest.

You carry it with you.

And I carry them with me.

They don't always know it,

And what's worse-

I don't always show it.

But I am proud to be theirs.

And at Christmas,

Just,

Thankful

Mess

Sometimes when I stare out of the window, I watch how the power lines splice the sky into segments. The piercing blues and the crunchy orange shadows of November. I imagine each sample of the sky, a different place and time in my life. A different direction.

Though it may look erratic, the sky is no less beautiful, or orderly, from being sectioned in to  so many different images.

It's all just up there. The leaves and the clouds. The faint whites and giant blues. The occasional bird's nest.

I imagine cutting the pieces between the telephone wires out. Like puzzle pieces. Tossing them around, and putting the sky back together.

Perhaps different than we found it, but still perfect, in its differences.

I hope, very much, that my life is like these splices of the sky.

Out of order, and possibly a mess.

But very, very beautiful.

Babylon

Babylon's a bad place
If you can't stand
If you've only set your sights
On the glory land

But in the worst minutes
And the darkest folds
I sit down with my palms in the dirt
I reach low

From the trees and the wind
From the birds and the sky

I can lift my face up
To the Lord on High

I can find the grace he planted
The season before
Watch it grow up from the wild
Where the branches soar

Sometimes we rest on what we haven't earned
Sometimes we collapse in the stories we were told

God's love
God's love
God's love

Loss

When sadraque died, I couldn't feel anything.

I knew I was sad. Bent. Hysterical even. I knew it. But I felt nothing.

I got the call. I looked fleetingly at my boyfriend, standing on a dusty patio, at a house show he was playing. We had been drinking beers and playing cards. Waiting for a crunchy and morose metal band to finish their set.

A normal night. Pleasant. With a slight breeze and a general coziness. As winter finally fell way to spring, and the last threat of cold excused itself from the evening breeze.

' li mouri.' Walnes said.

Where hours if not days before I had been told that he was on the mend, taking a turn for the better. That the worst was over.

And I believed them.

Believed them when they said that God would not let sadraque die. That the spirit had him.

But, as in all things Haitian. When he died.

They said, yes, we are sad, but it is done. And he is in heaven.

Sure, we miss him. But he's gone.

I sat on a metal railing beside a parking lot on Marshall street. I choked back vomit as warm tears adhered themselves to my mascara and drew vulgar lines down my cheeks. Sweat and snot met at the creases of my nose, and fell into the cracks of my lips.

But I'm in Virginia, I said.

I've been gone.

I've been here. And he's been there.

So to say, well he's gone.

I thought, he's been gone.

And this is not real.

And while, I know it is real. Still, day after day. Every day. Since that disgusting day in March. I remind myself,

Your friend is not here.

God, please tell Sadraque how much I love him. Tell him I miss him. Tell him, even though I was in Virginia.

He was always with me.

Necessity

We sit in the lap of luxury, in the security that finite things bring.

We wonder why we can't always find God.

But are we looking for him? Are we searching?

Have we ever needed to?

I think there is a peace that comes from desperation. 

Not wanting God, but needing him. 

From the first year with Jonas. I owe who I have become, to you.

If you ever want to feel futile, you can come here, and wash the laundry.

The kids at wings of hope go through three outfits a day. They're changed in the mornings, and they inevitably have to change out of whatever they're put in at some point in the afternoon, and again the next morning.

This means that on any given laundry morning, we are washing upwards of 105 articles of clothing. And the 35 blankets that they sleep with.

Every morning. By hand.

And it isn't laundry like you and I know.

We're in the third world. In wheelchairs. In diapers. In disabilities.

Laundry isn't done on Sundays, so when I come to help with washing on Monday morning, you can double that number.

210 garments, and 70 blankets.

To say that it's overwhelming. Well that would be an understatement. 

It's terrifying. These clothes are filthy. They're covered in urine. In vomit. In sweat and spit. In feces. In particles of dried food, and matted hair.

It takes about an hour to drop the bucket into the cistern and draw out enough water to dump into the large drums below. Gallon after gallon.

Your hands ache and cramp and blister. Your back muscles throb and strain. The sun beats down, in that one particular place on the back of your neck, and your temple. Sweat beads up and drips into your eyes.

It's 8:35 in the morning now.

With enough water pulled up and waiting in the drums, you can start.

Transferring bucket after bucket of water from these drums, it's poured into shallow and wide pales. Washing bowls, really. 

The soap and the bleach are added, and the assembly line commences.

The clothes are wrapped in soiled blankets and thrown down from the balconies with seismic thuds.

They're lifted by one of the boys and brought around the side of the house. The blanket is untied, and the clothes are sorted. By color, by consistency, by degree of dirty.

And then the real work begins. The soap is thick and course. It scrapes unwieldingly into the cracks and creases of your hands. Grainy and sticky, it's ground into the bottom of the bowl, and bleach and water is added. The smell is pungent. It burns your nostrils and sears your eyes. It stings your cuticles and all the various cuts and scrapes cry out. A paper cut has a big voice when submerged in bleach and water. 

It dries out your skin and leathers it.

I will never forget the feeeling of holding one of my Haitian friend's hands.

They don't feel like our hands. Calloused and dense. Gloved in dead skin. These are the hands of hard work. 

Of a hard life.

And they are unapologetic.

Real hands. 

I want to hold on tight. 

Sometimes in the night, I brush my hair away from my face, and I can feel the toughness of my fingertips.

I am working, and changing.

And I hope, that long after the calouses are smoothed away, and the skin is soft.

I hope these hands remember what it felt like. 

To work for everything you have. 

Jonas

Yesterday another person I loved died. An ocean away. And I think. Why?

I know I was lucky. To know Jonas. For him to love me. For me to love him.

Cross cultural boundaries and from different sides of the world. Sometimes my friends in Haiti feel like a dream. 

Jonas. You were joyful. Hilarious. Optimistic. And so, so kind. 

The hardest tasks never kept you down for long. Day after day, your patience and willingness to improve the lives of others shown in your unwavering smile and your mischievous eyes. I will miss your laugh. I will miss your heart. I will miss your hugs. 

Oh dear friend. I love you and I miss you. 

you

When the trees spout buds and showers of pollen. Their boughs shaking and swaying. When the air is cool and clammy. Spring's rejoice and arrival. And I know You are here, but what are You waiting for? 

Splendor

The air lays, thick and sweet. My throat caught with pollen and the dryness of tired tears. Bees and wasps harass the bush, now overgrown and menacing beside me. And I sit. A heavy day. The sun hides, but his presence is known. Clammy cheeked and sweat-mouthed, I let the chills of dehydration and fatigue run through me. What's next, I do not know. For I am here. In this exhaustion. In this crippling pain. In this unyielding unknown. On this God given spring day, full of splendor and surprise. 

The first tints of spring lay, lazy and thick in the morning sunlight. 

My heart begins to open. 

Love

The way I love Steve. The way I miss him from the minute I leave his presence. It's like my dearest dog, Oskar. Or my maw maw. Both dead in the past two years. When I think about going home, there is an ache in my heart where their presence is absent. A longing. To be with them. But more than that, that they knew. And that they still know, from heaven. How much I love them.

I've put my heart in two places. And when I leave these children, this family.

I miss them. My heart aches.

And I hope they know,

How desperately I love them. 

"And he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

II Corinthians 12:9