Thanks for visiting my blog. This blog chronicles a mostly 4-year journey of love, life, and loss. It's now time to retire. However, feel free to browse and read through the posts.
My current work/projects can be accessed at www.miriamjerotich.com

Monday, December 30, 2013

On Turning 23


God blesses those who mourn for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4, NLT)


It’s 1 a.m. when Papa phones me and everyone on the floor is asleep. His voice sounds just like it did when I was 12, and Mama fell out of the sky. He tells me you are gone. Gone? I ask how. He tells me you were sick. I ask him why he never told me you were sick. He forgot. He forgot to tell me that your stomach kept hurting when they came to visit you in hospital. He forgot to tell me that you had fainted on Christmas day, when you saw Jesus, when you tasted heaven before you came back and it was only three weeks and then you were gone home for good. I don’t feel when the tears start to burn the hollows and I forget to breath. I am remembering the unwritten email. I am thinking about the girl next door. Was it yesterday that she found out her dad had leukemia and she stayed awake crying? I had sat next to her. Quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to say, but here I am too, crying. I claw the carpet. I scratch my leg, my nails drawing along the scars I had etched on myself when I was younger and I had the tantrum. I ask God why. I call the boy. I want him to tell me why. I call the teacher and he tells me that I shouldn’t ask God questions because I might not like the answers He gives me.

So I write. I write to you. A poem. A letter. A song. A tribute. A stream of consciousness. Metaphors no one will understand, memories no one will decipher. An email you will never reply to. I make a video. I write a devotional. I fill a journal. I wear a red scarf and I write about being in the presence of your Great Absence. I write for three years. I write from all the angles I can imagine. I create characters, I set the scenes, I paint the sky grey. I am the doctor who sees you on your last day, I am Mama who washes you, I am the employee who works in the building next door. I am you. I want to take your place. Like the day Mama fell out of the sky, and I asked God to take her broken vertebrae and fuse it with my bones. Is this what they call love? Is this obsession? Pretense? I am in your memories, and yet I am not there? Mama visits me and tells me I am like you, but is this true? Did they see me when I was walking with you, after I hurt myself, after you tell me about God and I had not opened my Bible in weeks, after I mourn about the boy I love who doesn’t love me? Did they see me? Did they see me when I thought to myself that I would always believe in your God, that I would try to live like you if only to see you when I am gone too?

They say my hair is wild so Mama offers to braid it, but the braids unfurl in my dreams, untamed. My hair looks like it did when we were four or five, and I wore that checkered skirt and rainbow shirt. Did you know I wore the same clothes when we had taken a photo that Sunday before in front of Barclays bank? Did you know that a bicycle ripped my ankle and I had to get a dressing every week? Tradition says that I should forget those who are gone, so I remember them when no one is looking. I think about them when I am in the matatu in Eldoret and we are driving from Oasis down Nandi road and I begin counting all the hospitals I have visited. I think about my grandfather when he killed the rabbit and roasted it. I think about my grandmother and the voice that I never heard. I think about my cousins. The car accidents. The strokes. The gunshot wounds. I think about my teacher from primary school and the day I visited him in hospital before the cancer ate up his liver. He had been my favorite teacher. I think about people I do not know. Mostly, I think about you. How I stayed close to you in that photo. How we were two or three when we cheered for those kids who had graduated from Bunny’s Kindergarten. Did you know that after I joined Bunny’s (and you went to Lion’s) we visited a Hindu temple and I bowed before god Shiva? Did you know that after I joined Makini I asked the students if they knew you? I did not remember your first name, so I said,“Tai. Her name is Tai.”

I have a photo of your photo and it sits on my desk. I look at it when I wear red lipstick, and I remember it as I am cutting my birthday cake today. It doesn’t fit into the six by four frame I have bought, so I wedge it next to the bookmark I have not yet addressed to myself. The one that declares, “Be still and know that I am God.” I bought the frame because of the Bible verse lining the edges, infamous make-you-feel-good Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” This is the verse to tell you not to be scared because someone somewhere has your hope and your future. I have already been told that it has been taken out of context, used to pamper dreams that do not match the original intentions. I never quote the verse. I have replacements. Replacements when I think about the context plans and out-of-context plans. The unfinished book. The story that’s taking me one year to write. The “feminist” essay. The memories that only come to me at 1 a.m. The things I can only write after I have cried. This pina colada cake on turning 23. I will give away the photo frame when I graduate. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted.[1] Yet I know I will carry the photo of your photo with me, because I think finally this is what they call love: That day when we are two or three, and the ground is a dusty white, and we are thinking about a hope and a future. That day when I don’t create characters or set scenes or paint the sky grey. I am in God’s Great Story. At last, every chapter is better than the one before.[2]


If DEATH my friend and me divide,
thou dost not, Lord my sorrow chide,
or frown my tears to see;
restrained from passionate excess
thou bidst me mourn in calm distress
for them that rest in thee.

I feel a strong immortal hope,
which bears my mournful spirit up
beneath its mountain load;
redeemed from death, and grief, and pain,
I soon shall find my friend again
within the arms of God.

Pass a few fleeting moments more
and death the blessing shall restore
which death has snatched away;
for me thou wilt the summons send,
and give me back my parted friend
in that eternal day.

-Charles Wesley, 1762



The photo of your photo


[1] Joan Didion, Blue Nights
[2] C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

We're going to have to cancel plans

You were looking forward to his visit
From the time he eavesdropped on your conversation in the bus to the airport and he told you he wanted nothing more than to visit Kenya
And your heart clutched because you had wanted nothing more than to show him what he wanted nothing more of, you,
The tumbling hills and crevasses where the giants once lived
The green choke of hyacinth on the wide escapes of Lake Victoria
How you would wake up to the morning of a snow peaked mountain
And in the dizzying mist you would toast to your future
Maybe a drive through dry land whet with oil or rivers or a prowling lion
Maybe the dung smell of manure and raw milk from your father’s grazing Fresian cattle
The salty earth, the taste of Bogoria and Nakuru and the Indian Ocean
The pink flamingoes of your childhood
How he would stand by you when the president rolled into Safaricom stadium (because Safaricom owns Kenya) in his green land rover and his swordsman
How in the pelting rain you would enjoy the ecstasy of being one in Kenya and his first taste to the joy of belonging
Then he emails you “I’m sorry we’re going to have to cancel plans. Because of the recent incident in Nairobi, I’m no longer allowed to meet outside my hotel. The US government doesn’t advise me to be here longer than necessary.”
Longer than necessary. We’re going to have to cancel plans. He’s leaving you before he visits you
Before you show him what he had once wanted nothing more of, you.
Before he clings to you and the two of you meet your end in the inevitable explosion of light
The road carnage
The green muddy matatu ambling to Eastleigh to tailor your wedding dress...

We’re going to have to cancel plans.


Saturday, November 23, 2013

Song of The Wanderer (My Travel-Life Song)

Across the gently rolling hills,
Beyond high mountain peaks,
Along the shores of distant seas,
There's something my heart seeks.

Chorus:

My heart seeks the hearth,
My feet seek the road.
A soul divided
Is a terrible load.

My heart longs to rest,
My feet yearn to roam.
Shall I wander the world
Or stay safe at home?


But there's no peace in wandering,
The road's not made for rest.
And footsore fools will never know
What home might suit them best.

But, oh, the things that I have seen,
The secret paths I've trod,
The hidden corners of the world
Known to none but me and the Gods.

Yes, the world was meant for knowing,
And feet were meant to roam.
But one who's always going
Will never find a home.

Oh, where's the thread that binds me,
The voice that calls me back?
Where's the love that finds me--
And what's the root I lack?

*I have carried this song in my heart from the first time I read it as a child in the children's fantasy novel, Song of the Wanderer by Bruce Coville. I read the words to myself, but because the book said it was a "song" I decided to compose a tune and I sang the words to myself, hiding the chorus in my heart and dreams, long before I knew where my life would take me, across borders and mountains and seas, long before I was finally told that I am a traveller, and I realize that I have become the song of childhood, the Song of the Wanderer.
*Will upload a video of me singing the tune soon :)

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Lazarus

A different take on John 11 - The Death and Resurrection of Lazarus
A different take on writing - reading it aloud! Enjoy :)

Lazarus


Wednesday, November 6, 2013

How to let go (of a heartbreak)



Don’t let it go the way you like doing, by saying, “Yes, it’s in my past, yes it’s gone, or yes, I wouldn’t like to relive it again.” Let it go through Him, through Christ, knowing that He gave up all that He had so that He could have you and so that you could apprehend Him. Let it go the way you let go of your sin when you walked into His love and eternal life, the day you believed that Jesus is the Son of God.

Let go.

All that was said and wasn’t said, all that you invested and didn’t invest, all the love he gave you and the love you poured back, the heart he tore apart, the way you fell for him over and over again, the way you lost yourself in his love and his embrace and his kisses. Let it all go. Let it all go the way Jesus did on the cross, when he cried, “It is finished”, because it was, and it is. For you. Now,

Let go.

Let it all go into God’s arms, because He died for a reason, and you need to start living like He sacrificed His life for something more. Let it all go into His arms because He said you should give Him that pain, because His yoke is easy and His burden is light, because by the stripes of Jesus you are healed. You can’t carry this load with you anymore, your knees and your back can’t take it anymore. Neither can your heart.

Let go.

Let go and focus on finding you, the real you that you can only see when you begin to look at yourself the way your Father looks at you, not the way that he ever did or the way that he ever will. See yourself in your true beauty, not the beauty of your Afro or your jewelry or your chic style, not the beauty that you saw when he hugged you and said you are beautiful. See the beauty of your inner self, the unfading beauty of your gentle and quiet spirit, the one that is of great worth in the sight of your Father. See yourself in this beauty and let it arise within you, let it come to life and invigorate you with the Father’s presence. You are beautiful as you are, as He made you, fearfully, wonderfully, in His image, not by the words of his mouth or the touch of his lips. There’s nothing that he added or took away. There’s nothing he could ever add or take away.

Let go.

Let it all go and fall in love with yourself. Fall in love with the woman you were called to be, the woman you were created to be. Fall in love with yourself as you grow in love, joy, peace, patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, when from the overflow of your heart your mouth sings a melody to the Father, when your heart beats in harmony with His and you are so hidden in Him that you wonder how wholeness could taste this sweet. When it doesn’t matter that he had let you go, that he had moved on too soon, that he never thanked you for the flowers that had bloomed because of your presence, never acknowledged the fears that had been overcome because you had said you would hold him through the night.

Let go.

Let go and count it all loss. You were not created for him. You were created for Him, that you may become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly, and that you may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection, that you may so share in His sufferings as to be continually transformed in spirit into His likeness even to His death.

Everything else is dead weight.

So let go.



-------------------------------

Further reading as you let go:


General life:
A Woman After God's Own Heart by Elizabeth George
The Lady, Her Lover, and Her Lord by T.D. Jakes

Thriving not surviving singlehood:
Sassy Single and Satisfied by Michelle McKinney Hammond
The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass by Mandy Hale
Lady in Waiting: Becoming God's Best While Waiting for Mr. Right by Jackie Kendall and Debby Jones

Dating:
Secrets of an Irresistible Woman: Smart Rules for Capturing His Heart by Michelle McKinney Hammond
Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship by Joshua Harris

Blogs:
True Love Dates
The Single Woman
Heather Lindsey

Pinterest:
A Woman After God's Own Heart

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The Greatest Love I've Ever Known

She lived her life
loving Him
beyond oceans

He was her shield
Her very great reward

The Greatest Love she's ever known.


His favour will last us a lifetime!



Friday, October 4, 2013

The "Grievable" Life

One of my favorite theoretical pieces is the first chapter of Judith Butler’s book, Undoing Gender. In this chapter, entitled “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, Butler discusses the issue of a “griveable life” i.e. what kind of life should we mourn? I had time to think about her words a few days after the terrorist attack on Westgate mall, after the death toll kept rising, and the individuals became more faceless. I thought about her words after a Pakistani friend first told me of the terrorist attack, his words of comfort being, “Don’t worry, this happens all the time in my country and I’m still okay.” In truth, we are surrounded by so much terror and death, within and without our country, and as humans, we pick and choose the grievable lives, we mourn the ones that catch our attention, the emotive ones, the young ones, the ones that jar us to the reality that we are all headed to the grave. But who mourns for the un-grievable lives, in our case, the ones that are far beyond us, the kind that are “Oh I didn’t really know that person” or the “I’m not from that country, it’s all happening far away from me.” The indiscriminate shooting in America, the bombings in Nigeria and Pakistan, the chemical attack in Syria. How do we situate ourselves when we encounter “un-grievable” lives?

I don’t know the answer, and so I turn to Christ in moments like this. What Would Jesus Do in such a hurting world? Does he pick and choose between lives, the griveable and un-grievable ones? I think he grieves for us, all of us, he mourns for every life that is lost. He wept when Lazarus died. And if he promised to wipe away every tear from our eyes, then it can only mean that death was never in his plans, even though it would be my joy, one day, to be absent in the body so as to be present with my Lord.

Meanwhile, I pray that God would grant me the grace to see each life as he sees it, grievable or un-grievable, because if I am his hands and feet, then I also want to be a vessel of his sorrow.



Wednesday, August 28, 2013

That time

I didn't know what love is until he was gone
Until we stood holding hands whispering our prayers to the
God you loved
Until I saw you and crumpled to the ground in fear of
the future that my eyes could no longer see
Until I spooned with you through the night listening for
the nightmares that keep you awake
Longing for a morning
When you will wake up and sing your Methodist hymn
"It is well with my soul".
I ache for you
Because you loved him
And I love you.

Monday, June 17, 2013

An odic essay for my Father

I will buy you shirts and cologne and ties and cuffs over the years, walk with you into the sunset days. But I know that the best gift of I can give, is this, I hope. My offering of love in the art that you so encouraged me to take up. You have covered me in your prayers each day, I know, since my first breaths in half-caste skin and baby hair. You have called to check up on me each week. And even as I pursue my dreams, the ones I am too scared to even mouth, I am surrounded with comfort, because there's the beauty to having a father like you, someone who runs alongside me and makes sure that all the doors are open, all the paths stripped bare for my feet to graze, who believes in my unending strength to give life to those dreams, who forgives. I have never known a love like yours, and in the silence of my days, I pray that I don’t, so that the taste of your love will hover over me all my life, and I will sing today and everyday like Miriam did when they crossed the Red Sea. And I will call myself blessed. Because I know you, and I am yours. The man who loves God so wholly, so perfectly. When I curl into sleep I pray that I grow into your kind of faith, your stillness in the turbulence of life, your assurance that no matter what, God will provide. I remember praying once that God would make me fifty-years-old, your age then, when I first realized that your kind of faith was something I did not have. And on that day, more than anything, I wanted to be you. I can't wait to see you again, to be swept up in the embrace of your arms, to know how I am always home in your presence. In the man who has given me a Father's love, and more. I often write how I live my life through Mum's eyes and love, but I do so, I know, because she chose well, because I have this great foundation in you. You have made it possible for me to be me. And I call myself blessed because I am your daughter.

Happy Father’s Day everyone!

My favorite songs about fathers: Luther Vandross, Dance with my father, and Steven Curtis Chapman, Cinderella






Want to read more about fathers? Click here :-) 

The Spring of Hair

“The snowbirds are back from Florida,” Marsha says. “The winter was pretty rough on us since the students all left for Thanksgiving.” We're seated in Marsha's salon, in the back rooms of the Hanover Improvement Society on 23 South Main Street. Like most buildings in Hanover, the Hanover Improvement Society is a maroon brick structure with white windowpanes, featuring quaint shops with names like “Pink Alligator” and “Khawachen” and 50% sales for clothing from the winter months. It has stood here for ninety years, with a bronze plaque commemorating twenty-one men who worked “to improve and maintain the quality of life” in Hanover. Marsha’s only been around for the last fourteen of those years. She tells me about her major clientele during that decade – the snowbirds – Upper Valley residents who hibernate in Florida for the winter months, before coming back north when the snow thaws and the sun begins to glaze the sky. They come back now like spring, as the trees lining the cement sidewalks begin to bud, and business creeps back to hair salons in Hanover, to Marsha’s salon, the Ivy League Cuts formerly known as the Ivy League Cuts and Tans. “We’ll start getting a lot of students coming in for haircuts now, and the alumni on the big weekends come in here too. You’d be surprised how much hair people have,” Marsha says. Her mouth pulls into a smile, and for a moment the wrinkles below her cheekbones disappear.

Marsha lives twenty minutes away in Enfield, but she's been driving up to Hanover for close to thirty years now. She began styling hair down at Hilde’s salon on 83 South Main Street, working for the woman with a German name. “Hilde's retired now, lives down in Florida,” Marsha says. I tell Marsha about my Florida, the perpetual spring in Eldoret, Kenya, when my mother styled hair to feed her children. When I would sit on the floor between her legs, head resting on her laps, and she would massage my scalp, before twisting the kinky mass of my hair into cornrows. “I wish I knew how to braid,” Marsha says. She runs her fingers through the blond hair that she’s pulled back into a half-ponytail. “You know we had a big problem a few years ago ‘coz there was no one in Hanover who could do your type of hair.”

My type of hair. Afro-kinky hair. Natural hair. Needs coconut oil, shea butter, hair conditioner, glycerin, tea-tree oil, and moisture. Lots of moisture. Condition three times a week, shampoo and treat once a month.

“We do all types of perms, curly perms, regular perms, long-hair perms, spiral perms, piggy-back perms, and we use different rod sizes – big rods, small rods,” Marsha says. Her own hair goes through a three-step process. Wash, dry, curl, and voila! Thick, blond, luxury. No perm required. I tell her about my first perm, when the chemical broke the protein bonds and turned the tightly curled bulk into a straight mane that yearned for the small of my back, like Marsha’s blond hair, only black. My mother made me take out my perm before I came here, saying, “Hair salons are expensive in America. Where will you get the money to keep your hair straight?” Marsha nods. “They’ve hired a lady down at Hilde’s salon now who works on your type of hair. She comes up from Boston every two weeks or so. You should go down there, check out the place.”

Four years ago, Marsha discovered a tumor in her head. “It was the size of a tennis ball,” she says, “I was having these headaches all the time and I thought it was menopause ‘coz of my age. I even went to see a counselor, a lady upstairs,” she says, pointing to the ceiling. “They told me I must have had it since I was a child.” The tumor grew through more than fifty years of spring, through two husbands and seven children and fifteen grandchildren, through the styling at Hilde’s salon to the styling at the Ivy League Cuts, through the ages and the aging until four years ago, when it became a tennis ball and landed at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, benign. “I had a full-blown seizure before they found it. I was lucky they put me under a CAT scan as soon as my husband took me hospital,” she says. She traces an imaginary line from her forehead to the back of her head, using her finger to show me the scars. “Then I had three surgeries total.”

I come back to Marsha’s salon the next day, with braided hair. I walk down Main Street, past the mid-day traffic that flows like a seasonal river, past the monument dedicated to the men of Hanover who “served for the cause of humanity” during the First World War, past the wooden benches in memory of Hanover’s departed businessmen, to the Ivy League Cuts, to Marsha. I find her combing through the curls of a white-haired woman, recently come up from Florida. When she’s done with the styling, she helps the woman get up, dress into her coat, and walk slowly, painfully, into the arms of a middle-aged woman who I imagine is her daughter. After they’ve left, Marsha and I sit in the rectangular salon with its whitewashed walls and hardwood floor, where the oval mirrors reflect my face and Marsha’s back. The tubs of Paul Mitchell hairspray and Kenra hair conditioner on the shelves and wooden workstations stand over us like sentinels, as do the black-and-white posters of young male models in buzz cuts and bob cuts. Marsha faces me from a black swivel chair, and I face her from the lime green couch next to the entrance. “I’ve been styling her hair for as long as I remember,” she says of the woman who just left. She’s a wealthy widow, the wife a doctor who consulted with the surgeon who took out the tennis ball. “It’s hard seeing your clients grow older.”

I listen to the woman who has styled the children who became parents, and the parents who became grandparents and moved to Florida. I listen to Marsha as she tells me about the years of cutting and perming and styling, when Hilde’s daughter grew up and Hilde retired to a condo in Florida. “Hilde talked of leaving the salon to me, but Margot’s her daughter and she took over the place. I left to open my own salon. I just wanted to do something for myself,” she says. Then spring came and went, and the tennis ball happened. “I sold this place before the surgery, just in case anything happened,” she tells me. Her recovery lasted seven months. Seven months when she had to learn how to walk and how to talk. How comb through white-haired curls, how to cut and perm and style.

When I leave the salon I walk up Main Street, leaving behind the woman who lives in Enfield because Hanover is too expensive, who feels like passing out every time she gets her fuel bill, who’s worried about parking space and parking prices, who threw out her credit card to prevent impulse buying, who wonders about the minimum wage at $7 an hour, and the grapes that cost $3.99 a pound, who’s seen Meryl Streep and Steve Tyler down Main Street, who’s styled more snowbirds than spring can remember. When I walk up Main Street, I don’t notice the bronze plaque with twenty one names or the wooden benches dedicated to Hanover businessmen or the monument for veterans who saved us from the war of men. I think of my mother in Eldoret and Marsha in Hanover. I think of Afro hair and blond hair and curly perms in spring, the memory of us all bouncing in my head like a tennis ball.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Overcoming I

We sat together in the dark-lit room,
Him facing me and I facing him
He asked me what I would tell you if I saw you
If I had the chance to touch your stony-cold feel
Taste your shadows that linger in the past
In the present darkness

Sticking like a second skin to ebony
Like the green winter coat that she wore
On a sunny day in mid-January longing
For them to invite her to the circle
To hold her close and love her

I told him I would go to her
Ride the wave of time back to her side
Hug her close to my heart
And plant a kiss on her cheek
I told him I would tell her to block you out
Shun the voices that crowd her
Remember the happy days
When hearts will soar and compassion will come calling
And love, sweet love…

I would tell you that
You might taunt her
And break her
And grow a wound so deep
She will want to scream you to hell

But you will never overcome.

In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
(John 16:33)

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. 

~Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook", Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Freedom

she’s been searching
wandering
longing
seeking a destination called freedom
freedom to know the joy of life
hear a still voice silence the harmattan

photo courtesy Lusha Zhou
dry her heart
blow
chaff
make teardrops
fall like drops of rain
drench the pain 

freedom is behind her
around her
cloaking her
coaxing her 

freedom to be free
free to feel the wind kiss her cheeks
free to feel pain yet live
free to heal
to walk
to run
to glance upon the vastness of the ocean
and see love
only love…

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

For Single Girls…

I've been thinking about leaving, how you'll leave, how you've left, how they always leave.

When I sat next to you in church today I thought you would pray for me. The pastor said, "Pray for the person next to you", and I thought you would hug me to you, whisper an ode for me, inflame a bygone love to fill my inborn longing, to mark me with your infinite touch, and commit me to His arms, to your arms.

Yet I was alone when I reached my hand over your back, let it settle on that perfect arch, where the bend of your spine told me to stop. I swear I felt your heartbeat. And a pool of your warmth settled on my palm, and I prayed for you, longed for you. Hungered for His love to fill your heart to fill mine.

Maybe you would watch me in white walking down an aisle to your embrace, maybe you would carry me over a threshold and make me yours forever. Maybe you would kiss me. Seal His love in your heart, on my lips, in my heart.

But you left. Left without saying goodbye, without a word, neither charming nor the prince. They said the ones who love God are the best. They were wrong. They were right. Because here I am with my love-lorn-heart, writing about how you'll leave. How you've left. How they all leave.

Fall in love with Him before you fall for him. You may never be his bride, or you may be his bride for a while. But you’ll be His bride for all eternity.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Burdens We Were Never Meant to Carry

It seems trivial at first because it’s become a part of you. It sticks to you like a second skin, clawing at your body and your nerves. It breathes to seize your breath, take over your waking moments, till all you want to do is look over your shoulder and wonder; wonder who’s watching, who’s judging, who’s applauding your performance.

Today I walked down an icy road with the past staring like a hollowed tunnel before me, and I heard your voice, felt it settle on my heart like a warm touch on winter's night, like the first sign of rain in drought.

You said you carried the cross for me. You hung forsaken, your body torn, laden with enough burdens for eternity. 

I’m sorry for the burdens I keep taking up, sorry that it took me this long to obey. I’ll shed my skin for you, run my race for you, take your light burden and your easy yoke upon me. Because I’m done with this burden I was never meant to carry. 

All I want is to be with You.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Missing You...

When I dance under the watch of winter
Among the crystal snowflakes upon a white earth
I dream of the ones with whom I once walked under a fiery sun
Among stony crevasses along a thousand-year old valley
The ones who seal the symphony of my life
Who author the song that guides me home.

When I will feel wrinkles mutilate the contours on my face
And time ravage my bones and my brain
My heart will yet beat with joy
Knowing full well that the best of my days
Was spent loving you
And being loved by you.