Everyone needs a little piece of optimism.

"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more"

- July 15, 1944, Anne Frank

Neema

I am a sister, mother and friend to twenty one orphans in the town of Ngong, Kenya. Aging from eight to eighteen, they are the reason I am who I am today and talking about them is enough to reflect my true heart. To explain myself apart from them would be dishonest because they are on my mind constantly. I spent only eight days with those precious children two Junes ago and found myself completely in love. Their smiles were captivating, a window into the most open and trusting hearts I had ever witnessed. They sang of struggle, knowing the word all too well and held my hand tight enough to tell me they would never let go. From the moment I met them, they allowed a relationship to be built, one that I had no idea I needed until I was connected in a bond that truly knows no boundaries.

Half-way around the world, I still feel their love as strongly as I did when I was shivering in that hard dining hall for a movie night, a rainy night, with a green plastic chair to sit on and little Sharon asleep on my lap, Grace leaning on my shoulder. I cherished every second of being their shelter that night and they did not leave my side for the rest of the week.

I felt weak to leave them in Kenya, like I wasn’t strong enough to take them home with me. Home. I don’t think I really understood the meaning of that word, and so many others before I met the girls at Providence. They re-defined every single characteristic I thought I had or wanted to acquire. They had faced trauma like no one I have ever met to get them to the orphanage, to a safe place. Yet their hearts were full, so full. Their faith unshaken, like no hunger, rape, disease or death would ever stop them from loving their God. To think I was there to minister to them. They taught me more about myself and my faith than they nor I will ever understand and as if the hand-written letters in broken English, foam pictures of butterflies and hearts, threaded bracelets with colorful beads and drawings of the important things in their life, of me, of them, of me with them weren’t enough, their laughs and tears left a mark on my heart that no American luxury can take away.

No matter how appealing the ability to drive to the grocery store, shower with warm water and sleep without a mosquito net around my head are, I would give every single day living in Nashville if it meant I could spend my life with my family in Kenya. The hardship there is real, more so than the first-world problems that I find in this country of comfort and pride. They get it in Kenya. They understand the true meaning of life with spiritual richness and no material fluff to distract them from how they should live their lives. They have the kind of undying faith that God wants all of His children to have, the kind He sent his son to teach us about, the kind that Jesus died with and for. The girls in Africa understand that.

A dark face looked into my soul and gave me a name that I have since not forgot. She called me Neema and I was her best friend. At the time I thought she was just saying Megan in Swahili. I found out later that the name is an African baby name meaning “born in prosperity”. I can’t help but think of the true meaning behind this title. Maybe it was meant as a reminder, to not only be grateful for the blessings I live with but to be inspired to help others do the same, or maybe it was meant as a wake-up call. I now know that I am called not to this place but to another, to the land of red dirt and black skin. Whatever the meaning is, I am willing to find out and hopefully sooner than later. I am not just another Megan on the street. I am Neema and I belong to the children in Kenya.

A life worth sharing...

For Graham

     Real story-telling doesn’t need any words at all.

     Two eyes connecting you to a life are enough

     to drive you seventy-five head-first into a divider of the past

     making you break it, break yourself back

     to a girl with some kind of kind in her voice,

     converting the blues into a tendency towards melancholy

     or my past.

I shape-shifted my way through every class

of girls, drugs, songs and hoops

being the only kind of asshole you have to like,

telling myself I didn’t have to care,

as long as I had a court to lay my head on

and a bag of coke to take me away

from the white Halls,

my own home in hell

as an 18-year-old,

I’m the ultimate romantic

beneath a skin of damaged

rebellion and Clint Eastwood,

nose ring and all.

Late nights left me

tripping over everything but my shoes.

I felt a hand on my shoulder binding me down

with the same kind of grace I was told to live by,

from a Presbyterian pulpit,

pushing my 1.75 GPA in my face

telling me that I just didn’t get “it”

and making me become a man

of more than just soft eyes.

When Caroline went silent

they didn’t leave the side of her crib,

crying more tears than she had breaths

to breathe in a world of addiction,

divorce, death and Captain Hook,

with an exhale of hope

the way only a child can.

When you’re sad and when you’re lonely

And you haven’t got a friend

Just remember that death is not the end

And all that you’ve held sacred

Falls down and does not mend

Just remember that death is not the end

Not the end, not the end

Just remember that death is not the end

He fell down south,

the enemy of his family

with the world piled on four wheels,

a hole of substance taking him

farther.

Father.

Three years away kept him alive.

He was a friend to his son

on the rougher side of life,

just another channel on talk radio

with a need for change.

Before I knew it I was lost

in a war I didn’t begin by sneaking out

for the five hundredth time.

It was miserable

but we were miserable together

and there is something really beautiful about that

so I survived the world in camouflage

and made my way to a state of purpose.

I took my Harley to Yuma,

to the River Theme of folk rock.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,

and they say I’m well-spoken.

She took my heart to Nashville the next summer.

I never heard from her again.

     I still love the city, love her,

     thrive off the way she hypnotizes me

     with a grimy type of comfort

     telling me to Stay All Night,

     to remain undefeated

but I come alive

in the blue and dirty of Memphis,

finding fulfillment in the back of a juke joint,

a hard drink in hand

surrounded by the kind of rough people I prefer,

and a couple of Black Keys

to take me home.

Because I love poetry..

he is salt
to her,
a strange sweet
a peculiar money
precious and valuable
only to her tribe,
and she is salt
to him,
something that rubs raw
that leaves a tearful taste
but what he will
strain the ocean for and
what he needs.

-Lucille Clifton

Breakfast with a beautiful soul

In just a matter of days this beautiful soul is making her way to Vienna to begin her next amazing adventure. Savannah has the fullest heart I have ever witnessed, loving everyone and every thing she encounters. I have so much faith in her and know that she will not waste a single moment in this life. The meaning of her name says it all; no boundary can keep her from exploring every inch of this Earth.

Wherever she travels she will be carrying the same enlightening spirit with her. Savannah is the type of person that will change the world without even knowing it. In an unnoticed and humble kind of way she touches the people around her and leaves an impression that can not be erased.

⋆Savannah: from the open plain  

  

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⋆"Happiness is only real when shared." - Jon Krakauer

2042

I am from four numbers

and a few walls of warmth

where the sugared butter softens

cushioned against the white bread

I fought for. Holding memory was a task

given that every day was a blur

too full of life and love

to want to leave.

I am from four numbers

hovering over the red brick

running along a Monday morning.

The house sits still as the streets awaken

every blade of grass coming to life

the daybreak pushing past its shadow

into the hazel eyes of a young girl

clutching a small blanket

filled with hugs and play dates

carrying her secrets

into the world.

I am from four numbers

and I miss the solitude of an old woman rocking

back and forth like two blue swings

timing the breath between each moment passing

the old Calla Lily pressed down

by the inevitable.

I am from four numbers

and I’m coming home.

The Embrace

He held me fiercely inside a forgotten June.

The people humming beside us had no say,

along with the spotted butterfly chasing the hem of my dress.

The town spoke for itself, listening long enough

to see my hand against his neck and my eyes

weary from the space

he left (me).

What’s strange for me is that every flashback I had of what we used to be was full of beautiful memories. I hardly remembered or dwelt on the small fights and bigger battles we had in the last half of our relationship. Instead I went back to the first time he held my hand under water in the jacuzzi, or the time we were saying goodbye on my front porch when he asked me if I was cold and I said yes, so he threw everything he was holding down and held me tight enough to make me forget my chill, or the first time he kissed me right after he sang You Raise Me Up in my passenger seat and leaned over under the intersection at Baseline and Emerald to place a soft and subtle touch on my cheek, to him asking me what he should call me on my birthday, the night we star gazed alone in Azusa Canyon, the moment I was half asleep but awake enough to hear him say that he wanted to spend his life, his whole entire life with me, and the night he told me he loved me under a field of colored Christmas lights, the first days we spent apart during the holidays when I swear I fell more in love with him by each mile I moved, when he surprised me with a bouquet of my favorite flowers and a Circle K hot chocolate at our park, every touch full of life, gentle but passionate life together from surf to sand to snow to us, inseparable, connected at each instant, even when he tore my heart right out of its chest, leaving me in an empty house to wail with remorse, striking me with anger when I didn’t grieve the way he wanted me to, turning stone cold when I tried to let him go.

We stood as statues,

lifeless to the unfocused eye

waiting. Ready to give in.

Ready to come alive and I know that

he felt it too, the power in that hold,

backed against the fear of repetition but

I was his. We were real again. He was real again.