I Can’t Keep Saying Goodbye

A poem for all the wonderful people I’ve met along the way:

Leaving begins with a sinking feeling,
The emptiness of knowing
You may never again find a person’s face
On this side of earth.
But the world is so small, really –
We hold hearts like memories,
Remember the feeling
Of our own beating softly next to others,
Sharing air.

There are pieces of the ones we love
Drawn into the permanent creases
Of calloused palms –
Everything we touch
Reflects a smile,
The sound of a voice;
We do not lose the people we meet –
We continue to find them in everything else.

When you leave a place,
You bring your dear ones with you,
You bring all they have added to who you are.
Sometimes, it takes leaving
To realize that we are not so separate.
Sometimes, it takes going home
To realize that home exists
Inside of the people whose stories we carry,
Who carry our stories,
Each a part of the other’s,
Each continuing to share.

When we open our eyes,
Loving is easy.
Leaving is hard,
But loving is easy.

–Lauren

Puppetry and Poetry

Darlings,

We are the light

That wakes the earth from its dreams every morning,

The beautiful strangers carving footprints into the ground;

When will we remember that we were not born here?

That we have only come here to rest?

The thread has unwound from our spines –

We cannot stitch each bone back into its rightful place.

Disembodied, we float and adjust,

Not used to this weightless existence.

It is now that we realize what all we once carried.

 

Rise and come alive,

Bring along the peace of sleep,

The fog and knowing of hazy eyes,

The clarity of life held in that first waking hour,

The stillness of tired hands.

Awaken and follow the sound of trumpets,

Clanging cymbals you did not know were carried in your feet,

Reveal that you are music.

Rise and come alive.

 

Rise and come alive,

The speech of mountains lies buried in your throat,

A language waiting to fall heavy from your eaves

In a frenzy of boundless glory, uncontrollable beauty,

Spiraling with the wind,

Remember – we were not born here.

We have only come here to rest.

 

Stir gently from your sleep

With sweet dreams left hanging in starlight

And join the woodland creatures in a dance of memory,

Reliving a shared history;

You have been here longer than you think.

The rustling leaves will revive a spirit of belonging

And your shadow will lay claim to all that it loves,

Carrying with soft hands

The things you cannot hold.

 

Let the thundering sky open your chest

And swallow the fearful moments

That have buried doubt in the lining of your hull.

Know that certainty is not as great as it seems.

 

Shout because you have a voice and want to use it.

Shout because you are free and in love with the green earth.

Shout because broken can be fixed,

Because there is dirt beneath your fingernails,

Because you are full of volume,

Because the breeze moves every flower,

Because each day is full of magic,

Shout

Because all you have left to do

Is grow.

 

Rise and come alive, dear children.

Tread softly, and remember –

You were not born here.

You have only come here to rest.

–Lauren

Dancing Together

Last night, along with a series of other wonderful adventures throughout Philadelphia, we went to a local hispanic dance club. We have been planning to go the whole time we’ve been here because a friend of Joel’s invited us when we first arrived in Norristown, and we finally got the chance. Having never really been to a dance club, I had no idea what to expect. The minute we arrived, everyone there was extremely welcoming and happy that we had come to join them. The men and women were eager to teach the members of our group what kind of dances went along with the music that was playing and were very patient as we tripped over our own feet. I really liked that for the most part, everyone danced with everyone else, switching partners throughout the night. They simply come together every week to have a fun time, socialize, and dance. My appreciation for the kindness and acceptance that was extended to us grew throughout the night. Everyone there was an amazing and experienced dancer, yet they stopped dancing with their friends who knew how to do all the fancy twirls and footwork to invite those of us new to the scene to dance with them, to learn, and to be a part of their group. We were even later told by the DJ that he had played more music than usual because we were there and seemed to be enjoying ourselves on the dance floor. It did not matter that they didn’t know us and that we had never met – we had come to join them, and they were glad we were there.

It is quite an understatement to say that relations between different cultures within the US are fraught with difficulty, misunderstanding, and sometimes even hate. On a large scale, the problems that – for whatever reason – tend to arise seem far too complicated and deep for reconciliation and acceptance to ever occur. That’s why I think that healing occurs in the small things – on a personal level. There are so many topics, issues, etc. that we tread upon very lightly or simply skirt around. Where there seems to be no answer, no solution, the simplest course of action is to form relationships with individual human beings. It seems so basic, so obvious, but how often do we find ourselves immersed in cultures that we have not grown up in and therefore probably do not know much about? Stereotypes and generalizations result from a lack of understanding. Human beings love to categorize things, including other humans, into boxes that make sense in our heads – it is how we organize and understand our world. The problem comes when our categorizations imprint us with negative or derogatory impressions of what other people are like. For some reason, people find it easier when they do not know someone to group them in a way that they are comfortable with, often associating their depictions with either fear or superiority. Obviously, this is a terrible way to decide what you think of other people, especially because if we hold on to our loose perceptions for long enough, they become our truths. So what’s the simplest way to re-create your perception of someone you do not know very much about? Spend time with them! When barriers are broken down or crossed over and everything is laid bare, people are just people. Differences are how we learn; they are what makes life wonderful. If we want to know each other, we have to come together. And what better way to come together than to join one another in the beautiful art of dance?

 

I was inspired by last night’s experience to write this poem. For me, it speaks to a lot of things, but especially to the hope and revival that I find in the wonderful magic of dancing.

If dance overtakes you,

Then let it come.

Let it move you.

Let it wash and make you free.

Let it bend your stiff bones into an unrecognizable shape,

Unfolding in your marrow the deep yearnings of your hollows,

Mending the silent cracks you tiptoe along,

Trying not to wake the ghosts

That keep you company in your sleep.

Put to rest the roaring lions

That claw the flesh behind your tongue –

You are not the soul they mean to destroy;

They are only passing through.

Your swiftly whirling feet

Have finally returned to the light they were born into,

Gliding inside the mouth of honesty,

Full of movement that came without question,

That stole in through your edges

And smoothed their sharpness with the rough grace of its hands.

You are mending the world with your restlessness.

No one may have ever told you

That being still will break you.

Dance –

Press and draw the air around you into a frenzy,

Shaping the wind with the pull and heave of your lungs,

Feel it as it holds you,

This child of moon and earth,

You are skin stretched over soil and bathed in sunlight;

This is how you grow.

Seeds will fall from your limbs

as you sway and flow, you beautiful tree –

What you plant along the way

Will outlive you.

They will try and tell you that because your roots are deep,

You are confined to a place.

Prove them wrong.

Let your choreography transcend lines

That before may not have been visible.

There is no line that is set so deep

It cannot be erased

When spoken to

In the language of dance.

 

–Lauren

For Brandon, A Poem

When I was in Boone a friend of mine left to go on a solo trip to move across the country. He’s been talking about traveling ever since I met him and he’s finally gotten the chance to do so and taking his time camping and exploring his way out to California. Before he left he asked me for travel advice and I could think of absolutely nothing on the spot. So as I thought about it more I ended up writing a poem about my year so far:

For Brandon

Fellow Vagabond, Dear Friend,
you asked for travel advice and my mind suddenly turned
to a bowl,
void of all wise thoughts I like to imagine reside there.

I wanted to pour experience, desire, passion, and intellect
down your throat, impress you with the great insight
gained from collecting dirt under my fingernails
from so many different landscapes in such a short time,
but nothing came.

How appropriate.

I have lived among people whose lives reflect their hearts,
their hopes, dreams, and values planted in their soil,
bloom delicate flowers in their hair,
and I desire nothing more than to find my own seeds in myself to plant.

I have worked beside those who
have been enfolded in a darkness stronger than I can imagine
and emit so much light from their eyes
I can barely stand to look at it.

I have received so much generosity,
in all different forms,
that I can now recognize its shy face
in a simple cypress knee,
a murmuration of starlings,
a homemade potion for growing wings from a 7-year-old.

I am learning to be a vessel,
to leave my hands open and take in
the boundless beauty that threads through each town I visit
and reflect it in my own eyes,
let it awaken the sleeping stardust in my stomach,
knit it into every poem I write, interaction I have, and seed that I plant.

I am learning to take the desolation that inevitably comes
with the decision to uproot
by sitting and listening to the stream of sorrow
and letting it flow through my body and water the soil between my toes.

Because there have been days more enchanting than words can capture
alongside days of devastation that no ocean could hold
and it was the time in between,
when my center was shaken,
that I would have to fold my arms into myself
and feel the strength beneath my skin.

Remember that you have made the choice to be where you are
and remember to trust it,
you can trust yourself.

Curiosity, I know, dwells in your chest,
feed it.

Leave the loneliness tugging at your ribs dangling there,
wear it like jewelry,
it is far more valuable than you realize.

Bitterness is an easy escape,
don’t give in to its soothing melody.

Fight.

But something tells me you know all this already,
you chose to be where you are,
remember.

My mind was a bowl when you asked for my advice
and that, I think,
is the greatest thing I’m learning this year:
to hold and to share,
none of this is mine.

–Lindsay

Spring Forward

Maybe it’s a sign from nature,
A push to grow and flourish,
To leave the cold of winter
And let new flowers climb the lattice of my ribs,
To open my skin to the sun
And let it fill me with color again,
Thawing sadness from my numb fingertips,
To lose that grief-filled hour,
A call to move on and into something fresh,
Into newness,
To return to life
And leave the dead parts
Sleeping.

-Lauren Wilkie

Who I am at 23

I’m far better at befriending animals than humans.
I’d rather dance than breathe.
My mind runs at 110 miles per hour exactly,
Which is about 100 faster than my legs;
I stopped trying to outrun it years ago.

I organize my closet by color, style, and shade,
I clean and straighten like I’m constantly under inspection,
I categorize food into groups of things I can afford to eat and things I’ll regret later;
I need some semblance of order
To balance all the wild chaos that lives inside of me.
I floss every day
But wash my hair once a week
And my jeans only when they’re visibly stained.
I am not sure there is any method to my madness –
I hope they’re isn’t,
Because I would read into it
Like it was a flame burning inside a closed jar,
Flickering eagerly
With no hope of survival
Unless I saved it.
I am always trying to save things.
It is hard to determine what is worth saving
And what needs to be let go;
I am still new to the process.

I steal flowers out of people’s front yards –
Can’t stand to see all that beauty hoarded –
Want to spread it around,
Braid daisies into my hair,
Place blossoms over the sad eyes
Of lonely hearts in need of healing.

I don’t know nearly as much as I’d like to
And far more than I wish I did.
I carry hurt like a wounded dove
Perched on my ribcage for shelter.
I love too hard and too quickly,
And sometimes not at all.
I think everyone is good, even if they do not know it.
More than almost anything, I wish I was a hip hop dancer.
Or a mermaid.
I collect intricacies and wear them in a locket around my neck,
Marveling joyously at times when nothing else makes sense.
I hate winter and crave summer all year long.
The warmth of the sun is the only healing I believe in –
That, and genuine kindness.

22 was the worst year of my life
As well as a palindrome –
It’s the same read forward and backward –
There is no timeline,
No certain order,
No method of organization for all that grief.
Grief does not care about clocks and calendars –
It is felt in circles,
In waves,
In a soundtrack of irregular breathing patterns –
You cannot count hurt on your fingers,
But maybe on bruised ribs
Or crooked teeth,
Nearly invisible scars
Or unmarked graves of your dead childhood pets
And the pieces of you that were left there to decay in the ground with them.

There are days when I wish I could sleep forever
And nights when I can’t be still long enough to shut my eyes.
My favorite color is yellow because it is made out of pure brightness –
There are no other colors you can mix to create it –
Yellow is honest,
A lively saturation of true and cheerful self,
But willing to blend with other colors to create something new.
Yellow reminds me of what I hope to be.

I am a gardener.
I plant seeds in the ground,
Pressing my amateur fingers into loose soil
And whispering songs of confidence,
Hoping to unfurl roots from the heart of something so small and silent,
Encouraging leaves and stems to burst through and flourish
Despite the odds,
Defying every attempt
To stomp out all that beauty.

I am not through with the world yet.
For every day that I have opened my palms up to the sky and prayed for rain
To come and wash clean the deep and tired valleys born into my skin,
There is an open mouth somewhere else
Crying out for dry lips to be quenched.
When I summon a downpour,
It is not only myself for whom I am speaking,
But for the masses –
For the lonely,
The fearful
And the doubtful –
I have been and am all of these;
There is no one who hasn’t,
But we are not these feelings.
We are the breath of God carried on the wings of birds,
Stirring life into stale and collapsed lungs
That never thought they’d move again,
Allowing withdrawn arms and caving chests to unfold and move free,
To flow
And to dance.

Can’t you hear the music
Beating in your temples
(Your holy temples)
And the soles of your feet
(The souls of your worn and steady feet)
To the rhythm of your pulse?
It has created you.
You are an entire symphony inside of one body,
And you are one symphony in a vast collection.
You are whole on your own,
But I prefer to find myself in a mixture of masterpieces,
Unassuming and glorious,
Awed and humbled,
Enamored into rejoicing silence
By the splendor and loveliness
Of everything.

-Lauren Wilkie

Marley and Me

For three months straight,

Marley barked at me every single time I passed by his fence on a run.

He would stand on top of his doghouse,

Protecting his dominion with teeth bared and ears alert –

His eyes glared at me

As if he would love nothing more than to rip my throat out with his vicious jaws

And swallow my whole beating heart down into his stomach.

I told my story of the ferocious killer dog to a friend,

And turns out the dog belonged to his family.

I could not imagine this beast of a dog actually belonging to anyone.

I met Marley shortly thereafter.

He barreled towards me,

A compact brick of muscle

With tongue lolling lazily from his once believed-to-be-vicious jaws.

He nearly knocked me over with the force of his excitement

And wagged his whole body so hard, he fell down and rolled all over my feet.

This is not the dog I had seen on the other side of that fence.

I sat with Marley for about an hour;

He licked my face and laid his head in my lap.

All he wanted was to be shown love,

And I realized that perhaps that’s all he’d wanted all along –

That his constant barking, while seemingly brutal to me,

Was his way of saying, “Hey! Stop running and come play!”

It was his only form of communication,

And because I did not understand, I was terrified.

I am so glad I got to meet Marley on the other side of his fence –

On his turf, at his home, where he lives.

That fence to me had been a barrier –

In my mind was in place for a good reason:

To keep me safe from something I feared.

Had I taken the time to stop even once,

I probably would have discovered what I was able to find out

Only by going about things from the inside.

Once I gave Marley some time and love,

He responded beautifully.

We had simply had a miscommunication.

Whatever we had feared and misunderstood in one another

Was mended by spending a moment in each other’s company.

We became instant and forever friends.

Now, Marley is a dog,

But I think there’s something to be said here

About the way human beings interact with one another.

We are so inclined to put up fences

And to fear what is behind the fences we see other people building.

What would happen if instead of building fences,

We built friendships?

What if instead of running away,  

We climbed over or simply walked around?

A fence has to end somewhere.

There has to be an entrance,

A gate,

A hole dug underneath,

A ladder,

A weak point,

An opening,

Even if it’s invisible to our eyes.

The “other side” is not nearly as scary when we visit it AND welcome it to come,

Our arms stretched open to possibility.

There is no creature on earth that cannot, on some level, feel the power of love.

Everyone and everything wants to be accepted and given a chance to be good.

There are enough barriers already.

We need to tear them down and build something new – together. 

 

–Lauren 

Vanessa

A few weeks ago–actually it was the Saturday after the Tree of Life Conference which I wrote about in my last post–I went to the Prisoner Family Lunch along with my fellow intern Tracy and community member Elizabeth. The Prisoner Family Lunch is hosted by a different church each month and we serve and eat with people who are coming down from Atlanta to visit family members or friends in jail down here. From what I had heard from interns who had gone previously, the people who were traveling weren’t very talkative, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I definitely was not expecting anything like the conversation I ended up having. I met an amazing woman who was so fascinating and full of wisdom and we all ended up talking the whole time she was there. I was so moved by her stories and insights that I wrote a poem about her. I have a feeling I am going to be processing our conversation and learning from her wisdom for a very long time. So, here’s my poem (I changed her first name for privacy reasons):

Three weeks later and Vanessa’s smile
is what stuck with me.
After sharing one hour and some food with her,
learning her struggles,
hearing her stories,
I want to save her laughter in a glass jar.

Laughter burning in such rubble should be preserved.

It seems her life has been one blow after another,
she traces the connections through the ash
and finds the trees it has grown
as she ties back her hair with a vibrantly colored bandana.

“I understand the sacrifice needed for love,” she says,
and “all religions have the same core of loving each other
and loving God,
why can’t people see that?”

She speaks of the violence she has witnessed,
the injustices experienced,
with a frankness that only honesty could muster
and barely a fraction of the bitterness
I would allow her.
She lives right and wrong better
than most people sitting in church pews
and doles out judgment far less often.

This is such wisdom paid for at quite a price,
but I want to open my bones to her
and pay her back,
come to her with eager ears
and a box to save her words in and show her how valuable they are.
And she thanks me for the food.

She walks out of the door without a goodbye,
going to visit her boyfriend in jail
and I feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach,
still trying to catch my breath,
head whirling
without any words to form, for once.
I felt her absence instantly,
but as I looked around the room I was able
to find pieces of her presence to put in my pocket.

It has taken me three weeks to begin write about her,
some of the pieces I’m still holding close,
not ready to expose to the light of the sun,
afraid of dropping some of her beauty like dust
once I take them out.

She has felt the burden of race,
a beautiful mix of Korean and black,
felt home in neither
and home everywhere else.

She has lived all over the world,
saw the Berlin wall come down,
I can’t help but believe she had a hand in it
she’s so good at breaking down walls,
seeing the people on both sides.
What’s a wall of concrete and metal to her?
Graffiti and human ignorance all in one
and once it got started it fell so easily.

She chips away at walls with her words,
soft and burrowing,
finds the innermost bones that look just like hers
and pulls them to the surface
until, in her presence,
you are skeleton,
you are exposed,
you are as you are,
soft and human and gasping for air.

Vanessa can smile through all this wreckage,
she’s done it her whole life,
with her fingers in the rubble
and her eyes above.

Her laughter still trickles through my dreams at night,
I’ll probably be haunted by her for the rest of my life,
an alluring phantasm
burning down barriers
and calling me to do the same.

–Lindsay

Queenie

I wrote this poem about a woman that occasionally comes to help cook at Koinonia.

Queenie is beautiful,

A carefully poured mixture –

Part womanhood, part God’s sacred magic,

Fully human,

Brought to a boil and never stopped simmering,

Spits fire from her full, burning lips.

Birds alight on her open shoulders

Trilling aloud the song of strength

Silently sleeping under a blanket of time and skin.

Confidence spreads through her hands

As she pours, mixes, rolls, and pats,

Kneading love and history into food meant for sharing.

Queenie is a cook,

Steeped richly in experience.

Used to run this kitchen

Before age and injury changed her status

To occasional visitor.

If you were to ask me how she cooks,

I’d call it generous.

“Baby, that need more butter! Ain’t got enough.”

Collects recipes and holds them gently

Like stories in danger of being lost.

Gives out instructions like a piece of her own heart,

“4 cups flour, 4 cups oats, 2 cups sugar. Plenty of butter.

Girl, let me watch you pour that cinnamon –

I’ll tell you when it’s good.

Mix it up now with your hands. Alright then.”

She knows ingredients better than I know myself;

My hollow cheeks are not ready

For that kind of knowledge to fill them.

Queenie and I are both trying to feed people –

She nourishes hungry mouths

In a way I can only hope to do with words,

Serves up wisdom and hot meals to empty stomachs

And leaves them happy.

I still do not know how to accept this kind of love;

I do not think I’ll ever learn to.

Screams tossing and turning inside of my restless body

Beg my mouth to steer clear

Of anything that feels too heavy –

My fears and habits already weigh me down

Far more than is wanted;

I do not need anything extra.

With food, I want what’s clean and safe,

Untainted by added calories,

Consistency and control in the midst of chaos,

Security and command over something.

I am aware that this sounds unhealthy.

If you ever happen to meet a 23-year-old woman

Whose body image wasn’t drowned

In the adolescent flood of stick figures

Walking across TV screens

And down supermarket checkout lines,

Send her my way.

I will look her over fearfully,

One hand in love and one in curious envy,

Seeing if I can recover my self-confidence

Somewhere along her poised spine and beautifully bending kneecaps.

No, home-cooked food is not my love language,

Nor is it how I feel loved,

But I am thankful that the world has Queenie.

She gives me hope

That we can show people how much we care

Simply through being and doing what we are.

Queenie is beautiful,

A carefully poured mixture –

Part womanhood, part God’s sacred magic,

Fully human,

Brought to a boil and never stopped simmering,

Spits fire from her full, burning lips.

Asked me the other day

If I was going to forget her when I left here.

I’ll be damned if that woman ever leaves my mind.

She knows how to feed people –

I mean really feed them.

Food is only a small part of what we have to partake in to grow,

And Queenie knows that.

Food is common ground – relationships come from it.

I too have been fed by Queenie;

Listening to her talk, hoping to know her,

Tucking away her stories – the recipe for her soul –

To read over again when I leave here and need reminders.

She speaks and works in languages I cannot understand completely,

So I listen, quiet and close.

Words have never made me feel so full.

 

–Lauren 

Learning from the Mockingbird

As just a little context for this poem, ever since I got here I’ve been noticing mockingbirds everywhere. It seemed like every time I was outside or even near a window, one or two would come a land on a branch just in the perfect spot to catch my eye. I decided that this was something I shouldn’t ignore so I looked up what mockingbirds mean and found this: overcoming fear, finding your own voice, “they teach us to develop self-confidence, to speak our truth and stand up for what is ours by right.” All of these things have been emphasized in my life over the past year and especially this summer. I don’t believe in coincidences, I think if you pay attention to what is around you then whatever you need to learn will show itself to you. So, I wrote this poem after mulling all this over for a few weeks:

Learning From the Mockingbird

My grandfather learned how to fly here,
training for a war he had nothing to do with,
encasing himself in machinery
to view the patchwork land as a moving target.
He landed his last plane on his 21^st birthday and never looked back.

I, too, am learning,
but I doubt I’ll ever go 10,000 feet up.
I’m learning how to dance in the winds of this world
not glide above them.

My teacher is a mockingbird,
not even aware of my eager eyes
hungry for her wisdom.
Hungry for her knowledge of herself,
for her fearless pursuit of new calls to learn,
for her playful attitude.

She will help me to find these traits in myself
and my tiny hops
will become graceful flights.

For now I must settle for being grounded,
feeling the earth hold me as it’s own
and dancing joyfully with the mockingbird
from below.

I am learning to love my limits,
how they tie me to the earth I have come to adore
and teach me how to move with fluidity
along the ground.
I’m learning to grow in and grow down
from a creature who is constantly soaring.

But maybe this is in my veins,
the exhilaration of my grandfather’s first flight
seeped into his blood
and was passed down to me.

My grandfather learned how to fly here,
how to defy the laws of gravity
how to kick the red soil away without regret
and soar through the air free of all chains.

I am learning how to kick away soil
but I still keep some for myself.

–Lindsay