pain

sarah says pain is beautiful. crying is beautiful. because we carry this weight, crying is how we release.

suffering
is
allowed.

don't try to cheer me up.
i'm grieving.

it sounds dramatic and awful
but
it
literally
feels like
my heart got
ripped out and left.

and i know that
feeeeels,
doesn't matter all that much.
but it does.


can't focus on anything
i listen to crickets
and sad music
and look at my textbooks but don't soak in the words.

i need someone to just be with me.
SILENTLY.

i am allowed to need extra time
space
and silence.
i am allowed to hurt.

--

boys.
TURN
DOWN YOUR MUSIC.

my heart used to ache for maine. i could look at a picture and just ache. and all of my ache has been swept into this other place, willow tree and a barbed wire wall.

quietbeats

the music, quietbeats, like those from airplane headphones, channel eight on your arm rest
and you cannot slouch.
my head nods down, surprise,
cause the street is filled with yells and hollers
girls and boys
trying to be old-
though the old watch the news and things like jeopardy and laugh track shows
and dance on wooden floors-
we dance too,
waving our arms so they would not fit in clubs or bars,
our ears being interrupted by frequent trains,
laughter of the guys downstairs.
eleven eleven
time
for
bed.
if only I could unfold myself from this chair and crawl into the other room, maneuvering fire hazards of notebooks and shoes, brush my teeth and climb.into.bed... goodnight moon,
bedtime for bonzo.

the sound of tires on gravel.

solemndays

these solemn days we drink tea on the balcony

my heart rests

in knowing you’re alive.

my nonsense speaks volumes

of love.

because any real meaning aches to put to page.

a year ago their definition of love

was thin,

non-fat milk for real, rain forest coffee.

didn’t work,

nothing true.

though their words were scientific,

my nonsense words say more.

she writes because she can do nothing else,

i write to breathe.

and these days,

even writing cannot unclog this nose.

even writing cannot touch this.

even writing cannot show,

only telling these days,

and that they say i am not allowed to do.

just a break in the walls of these strong feelings.

my heart rests

in knowing you are safe

knowing you are His.

in these small words i sit and wait

and wait

trying to place faith in One

instead of seasons and hours

and wait.

i say there are other things-

there are,

and there are not.

my heart rests

somehow,

and then we fall apart.

these small words

speak volumes

of falling apart.

I just need to write for a bit. I mean, I need more than that, but that is what I can do right now.

I sat with a friend today, outside. She used these terms, like she thinks I'm a writer or something. I'm not a writer. I'm just a girl, sitting on a bench, listening to cicadas and wishing she was in the woods with Jesus. Just a girl.

I'm kind of depressed.

I love being able to see the clock tower from my bedroom.

I love the sunsets.

I love that I can see the courthouse clock tower from my bedroom window. I love how it looks in the morning and during the sunset. I love that I can hear the bells on every hour, if I listen close.

I like the cool breeze through my window in the morning.

I like watching clouds melt into blue.

I like that I have a few days to adjust.

I'm thankful for sitting with A yesterday, and realizing that no, I'm not yet ready to jump back into life here. I'm going to think about that today. Make a list or a paragraph or something.

I'm thankful that I got to skype with K, a teammate from Hungary and then later talk with S on the phone. I love those girls.

Thankful for Songs of Water music.

August 16. New Apartment. I sit on the couch and eat my turkey sandwich. A sparrow lands on my balcony and it gets me. Because if He cares for the sparrows so much, how much more will He care for me! And BLAM! Love! What a special place I get to live in~ with sparrows that land on the balcony and a beautiful view. Instead of looking at a busy street or ugly college houses, I get to look out at an empty lot full of wild flowers. And tonight there is a rabbit too. (Yes, Bowling Green is overrun with rabbits, but I haven’t been here in a long time. Tonight it is new.)

I start thinking about this weekend, how I am lonely. But at the same time, how I don’t want to seek people out too much just yet because I need this alone time to think (and perhaps cry) about Hungary. I miss that place a lot. And not only the place, but how I was in the place. My nastiest places were loud there, or at least, to my heart they were, but I was aware of them, working on them. I learned a lot there- a lot that can’t be translated into words or lessons. And most of all I experienced the love of God.

When I think about it, I MISS that place and my team. But it isn’t a forlorn (?) sort of missing. I also feel rather full, my soul does, thinking about it, all that we did and got to witness. I’m still rather blown away that I even got to go experience it. Rather blown away that I was chosen for that glorious experience.

Sitting here on “my” couch, laughing out LOUD, over these pictures. Like the one we took on the last night, wearing our gifted jewelry, all thinking we looked pretty good and then we turned the camera around and AUGH! It was the true us, tired and stressed and eyes red from laughing too hard.

Different now. More of who I should be. 

Dentistry

I count to ten in Farsi to keep myself calm. It's not that I'm not calm, it's just that I don't want them to think I'm not. My jaw hurts, you see, after having it open so long, and sometimes a tear or two will slip out my right eye. So I'm distracting my mind from the pain. Farsi numbers, I use the alphabet, A is for apple, B is for balloon, C is for caribou... My toes do a jig in my sneakers- a secret dance. It is for this very purpose that I do not wear my fun shoes.

They used to have a large painting of a lake scene on the wall, with children and ladies and umbrellas. I would imagine about those people and their afternoon. But they've replaced it with a picture of a window, and a pot of flowers. Sure, you could write a world about why the window is blue, and why Mr. or Mrs. So And So chose yellow flowers, and why the pot was put there to begin with. But the picture is hard to see across the room and around the hygienist's gloved fingers- too hard to see the details, anyway.

The "polish" is orange flavored, and I strongly consider ripping her hand out and warning her that my gag reflex is strong, especially for orange flavored teeth polish and I might throw up but then I figure that if I tell her, I most certainly will. So I don't.

She makes a big deal of the fact that I'm not a pop drinker- every time, but especially today.

And then finally, finally, after the doctor comes and prods his metal stick into my gums to scrape away any residual dust, and after one tear escapes my right eye (hoping no one sees), I finally am released from the chair and handed my floss, my little bag of toothpaste and my cool orange brush.

And then I walk home, talking out loud to myself about the fall.
glorious.