For Christmas 2010, I went to Syria. It was beautiful, and I was so impressed by the hospitality of the people. I would go back.

And now... that beautiful place is hurting, crumbling.

I spent the summer with refugees. None of them Syrian that I know of, but next summer they probably will be. I hope I can tell them I've been to their home and how beautiful it was.

It is a bit crazy to think that a place I've been, that I really enjoyed, is producing refugees now...

just crazy.

Five Minute Friday: Grasp

Grasp.
Start.

I can grasp at the wind
but it will not stay in my hand
it will not stay with me.

I can grasp at these things
that I think maybe I want
but they will not stay with me

I can grasp with the fingers of this heart
knuckles turning white and tired of holding so tightly
to these things that aren't meant to be mine.
I can grasp with these fingers until it hurts to let it go.

more than these things I want You to just take them
but I think what you want from me is to give them
to deliver them from my hands
to walk to your throne and put them in your hands

I can grasp at the wind
but it will not let me hold it still.
I can grasp for these things that I think would be good for me.
but I ask You to take them away when I realize they're not for me.
but I think I need to let you have them,
one finger of my heart's hand at a time
you can pull these fingers back
my hands will shake when I let it go
you can take it
but i think you would rather have me give it to you

I grasp the thought of this becoming true,
these silly things that are not you even if they are good
at these things that look so beautiful

stop.

starting writing- or continuing rather.

There is barbed wire. It did not startle me, I expected it. But, if I were running out of fear for my life, and I arrived in this strange but beautiful land, and I came to this gate, and there was barbed wire, I would be concerned. If this place was to be my permanent residence, for awhile, and if I had children, and it was sort of home to them, I would be concerned about the barbed wire. If my home, the place that I loved was destroyed, and I arrived in this place, that I hoped could someday maybe be my home, and there was barbed wire, I would be concerned. If I was all alone in the world, if my parents had died, and I had somehow arrived here, far from anything I knew and loved, and if there was barbed wire around this place that was supposed to be my sanctuary, supposed to be a place that was safe, I would be sad.

If the wire and the walls were a remnant from some other time, I would wonder why they didn’t pull the walls from the ground, or rip the wire off the top. I would wonder, is the wire to keep others out? Or me, in? And if no one in the town even knows this place exists, why do we need to keep them out? And if the food here is not so good, and there is no special equipment, no special toys for the children, why would they want to come in, ever? And if I had no other place in the world, why would it discourage me from leaving? 

There is a willow tree. The boys grab clumps of branches and swing. And sometimes they fall. The girls laugh at the boys, when we are with them. And then one afternoon when we are in our room on the fourth floor of the Immigration building, we glance out the window and watch the girls swing from the willow branches. And sometimes they fall.

The women sometimes sit in a small gathering on a grey, wool blanket under the tree. They take off their shoes and perch on the edge. Sometimes they bring out cups and glasses of orange juice- not the fruit, the color. And sometimes they bring little pieces of cake- not sweet like American cake, but more like cornbread. It is the most beautiful place, a blanket and women under a willow tree in the summer, a perfect place of shade, sunlight slivers dancing through willow branches, women telling the little boys to play somewhere else.

They are the most beautiful women I have ever met. 

I can feel it in my soul
I can feel it in my bones

pry my fingers open
release these white knuckles from their grip

expose me to the wind.

my soul wants to run
wants to dance

the road is narrow but I will not fall off.

Five Minute Friday: Wide

Here's the deal. Sometimes on Fridays, I join with these bloggers and write for five minutes flat, no editing, and on whatever comes to mind regarding a topic. The topic today is wide.

start.

wide. that is these northern Ohio fields- corn and whatever else off into the East and West for miles. We walk along the trail, seeing far into the distance and never seeming to get any closer to our goal. There is no circle of trails, just straight one way and then we turn around.

wide. I smile wide inside.

a rain drop would be wide to an ant, or a young spider- what is young to a spider anyway?

I sit in this wide room- the computer cord stretched all the way across it- and listen to the tires in the rain, and the refrigerator, and a low humming I can not place, and wonder if my roommate is coming home any time soon, and try, try to do some homework. Statistics. harsh.

wide. a friday night.
a train whistle
a train, if you measure it that way.

one
more
minute
stretching across the clock

a leaf off my liberated bonsai tree.

9/19

There is so much
going on inside my soul, but I cannot get it out.
I want to scribble on the walls,
fling wide the doors and windows and huddle
in a pile of cold.
Run until my knees give out, at night and into dawn-
stain my hands purple with sunset and wildflowers.

I want to rip the pages out of this book
and make you eat them so you understand
the tired.

To erase my trail and melt back into yellow, European sidewalks.

I want to laugh with the cold wind and have it be normal-
to love the snow.

solitude-
no. I will not help you with this good thing. I am resting.

If the floor was made of linoleum I would let the rain in. Splash the puddles on the floor.

Summer 2013. I am going back to Hungary.

Much to do before next summer, but I can already taste it, the sweet relief at being back. I let that place take the home slot in my heart, a little bit, and I long to go back.