You make my body burn.

As often as I find myself, I lose myself.

After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, an elusive gaping worry. You don't try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it's nothing after all, everything filling up finally and absolutely with death. After the briskness of loving, loving stops. And you roll over with death stretched out alongside you like a feather boa, or a snake, light as air, and you...you don't even ask for anything or try to say something to him because it's obviously your own damn fault. You haven't been able to--to what? To open your heart. You open your legs but can't, don't dare anymore, to open your heart.

Lust & other stories by Susan Minot

The only power you have over me is what you have over my flesh. That is all.

Let my eyes not set themselves upon you.

Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. -Song of Songs 2:7

I'm trying to find my way back to You, and by chance I was never with You to begin with, I will be ready someday to seek You and find You with my whole heart.

I used to remember the Lord's Prayer by heart, but now I can only recite the beginning:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory. for ever and ever. Amen

This song cracks me up:

我不是很想你

Old School

I picked up the journal that Justine got me and was reading back about how things were a year ago. Wow. We change so quickly, young chameleons we are.

Holding a pen in my hand and inking my thoughts onto paper seems foreign and unnatural now.

I say it'll be okay, but sometimes I don't think I say it with much conviction

Every morning, we have meetings (devotion) where we're given little slips of paper with words that are supposed to inspire us to be better teachers. We read them and though I understand the words, I don't really understand until my cousin speaks. She has a way of speaking where everyone can relate to. She speaks in a way that her sincerity is in every word she says because she truly does care, and that she wishes for us to get that these kids are more than students, they are us (but hopefully much much more).

Days, like today, I hear her speak and I have an urge to close my eyes and have her voice flood my senses: I admire her vigilance, her honesty, and her unwavering hope for these kids.

I am not a patient person; I snap at the slightest provocation. There have been moments where I've yelled out of anger and stress, but it didn't really do anything but to scare them. Isn't that a little too Machiavelli for me? If I teach with more love, with more patience, I hope that they will listen better and try to comprehend what I teach.

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There's a quiet boy who was in Spanish class but since he didn't cause trouble and didn't speak that often I overlooked him. He is big for his age and looked like he's mature enough to be left alone, but I should have taken notice of his eyes, the kind that says he could nunca cause harm to anyone. He has eyes that holds loss, sadness, of want of someone to take notice of him.

He asked me to take him to the bathroom because he wanted to blow his nose. At first, I had just returned from the classroom to watch my kids, so I was hesitant to leave them to take another kid from a different grade to the bathroom. When he came out of the bathroom, as we started to walk back to sanctuary, his face scrunched up like he's been holding back a great deal of pain, and he started to cry. He didn't sob. He didn't wail. He cried silently, great big tears that broke my heart. I hugged him and wished that I could take it all away.

I wished I could protect him from all the other kids who laugh at him because he can't enunciate words as well as they can. I wished I could keep him from getting pummeled by the world, by its expectations and by its cruelty. I wished I could keep him from building those walls that will keep him in the future from getting hurt, but will also keep others at a distance. Finally, I wished he knew just how special and wonderful he is, and how special and wonderful he will become.

But all I could do was pat his back as he cried and pray that God is watching over him.

Tuyo soy por siempre.

Trust is the operative word.

Carroll's blog

If You Knew
by Ellen Bass


What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

I dreamt last night that I was on a long road where the sides were covered in greenery. I was behind a couple of people, jogging at a slow pace. Eventually, the people in front of me disappeared and I started to sprint. Why? I can't say.

I sprinted until I reached a mountain of snow. As I was climbing, a bird dove straight into the snow and vanished. I kept on climbing, my legs moving on its accord, moving higher and higher. Then as I finally came to a stop, a bird dove into the snow, marking my finish.

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