missed connection

So in another reality I would not even be capable of writing this. I should be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean right now, or else landed in Johannesburg already. 

For some reason I still have not figured out yet, I was not meant to get on that plane to Jo'burg, me and five others. Our flight from Toronto to Washington was unbelievably delayed, asking us to deplane while they tried to fix the a/c. I'm grateful that heat does not seem to bother me too much any more, because did it ever swelter for a bit there. Everyone's tempers were short and tense via angry phone calls and advice of "give them hell". 

For all that I wish I could have arrived on time, the whole delay did not cause me much panic. I'm pretty zen these days...also I have six weeks in South Africa, so I don't need to lose sleep over a night. 

And lose sleep I certainly did not, as this hotel that the airline put us up in is NICE. One of the options on the "hotel services" page of the welcome guide was horseback riding. 

Yeah. 

Okay. 

This is my view from my window 

which was pretty for the hour of day light I had left when I arrived here. 

I spent the night just decompressing, watched some GoT. 

Orange water, anyone? 

Life sometimes eh? 

I'm going to go spend the rest of my hour left here down by the poolside, perhaps, enjoy this bonus day of sunshine while I still can, because my next reality is a metal tube flying through atmosphere for 17 hours. 

I'm gladly taking suggestions on why I am here for the time being, why I didn't make it last night. 

Or maybe like most things in life, it is just a matter of things that happen and it is nothing more than a missed connection. 

So now I want to ask how many other connections have there been in my life that I've missed...willfully or not. 

I'll see you all on the other side. 

-k

and and and

hello june.

this happened on the seventh day.

I thought I should try and say something about this.

....

But I can't, I don't know how to, I don't know if I can, not yet, because I live, lived it. The most I have is to read back over what May did for me and try and turn that into some kind of ache in the heart that tastes like sunburns and sunsets and dancing and darkness. That's what I know, starlight and streetlight and midnight and bridges and quiet green and funkdirty and leaving.

...

hello july.

I am now 20.
maybe I shouldn't have told you that for the sake of the internet not knowing these things, but naah. f*ck it.
(wow, look how polite I'm being.
no guarantees of such attempts in the future)
but I am also on another evening of suitcase zipping and clothing rolling, pushing and packing and hoping for everything to be where it needs to, because tomorrow I am back at the airport and tomorrow I am en route for 2 hours to Washington and then 17 hours to Johannesburg.

SAY WHAT.

The month I've had not on airplanes has been (           wish there was a word                ), in seeing friends that I never see but will continue to always never see and it will be okay, in laughing with my brother and getting around the last two years, in frozen yogurt and conversations, in not making up and not making over but in making it through, in daily music, in playlists and car rides and graduations.....
in camp.

Ah.

Yeah.

Kretinga.

Two weeks of if only you could be there. Of radioactive, of skuuuuunks and pringles and cups of green tea and pb&js, dances and singing, nutella... of spiders and stay and same love and clutching and laughing, of beach preaches and confident walks and dressing up and hallelujah, of pirates and mad hatters and words and raspberries. Of 5 ams, and hearts, and crazy pants. Two weeks of sunrises and sunsets and siestas and southbound trains, cats that came back, midnight, elephants, whistles.

All I have left to say for it is iki pasimatymo. There is nothing I can do or speak or write or think that can cover what it is, what it was, so I will leave it to what it will be, another year of time that maybe is and maybe is not as real as those two weeks, but they are all we've got. Oh, and that's the hardest part.

I don't know anything, and least of all what will happen next.


So I will leave you here with thoughts on wagon wheels and leftover incense on prayer flags and how time never listens, how time never slows, how time never exists the way it wants to, needs to.

so this is for new borders and old friends and old beginnings and new ends and and and

stay

-k

the last things or so

I don't know what to call this post so I am telling you this here because I am writing this first and whatever the title is, just know that its creation and delivery has come after whatever is about to be written here. Which I also don't know what it will be but that's how I write this anyways, all together and at once with the words and thoughts being same-same, same tempo, same rhythm, slowed only by transliterating synapses to syllables.

So.

This is our porch view from Jungle Heaven and I put it here because do you see the small pathway? Right, good, so think about pathways and walking and adventures, because part two of our weekend was a jungle safari, fording the same river as our elephant ride and passing the lightning tree and two of our guides sandwiched the white girls so we didn't get lost although there were branching trails around us. We walk-ran run run run ran-walk-runrunrun-walked our way to viewing point one to see a tiger but we just missed it, sweat pouring from our bodies, looking like we were taking river baths sit rhinoceroses. We hiked through grasses taller than our heads, me at the back being dampened by everyone else's sweat that stuck to it and white sandy patches of trail were heat waves of hot, shoes squelchy and wet. Arrived at a second viewpoint and this was "time to be patient because lots of tourists are like rush and go but you need to listen and wait", said our guide with the long singular dreadlock down the back of his head. We sat in the dirt and practiced squishing ants as huge flies buzzed around us. Our body temperatures finally slowed down,  no longer drip drip dripping sweat, more like a steady sheen. Eventually we got adventurous and me, Vita and Bailey climbed the lookout point tree and our guides and Dinesh called us monkeys and laughed in breathy whispers to not scare the suppose tigers. It was awesome. Breeze through the leaves, dappled sunshine, slight sway. I closed my eyes, wedged my leg in a branch gap and hooked my arm above me and could have slept. 

No tigers in sight but deer and birds and tree climbing sufficed, rhinos in the distance and lookout points and epic heat and a bonus river swim at the end. Rivers, I have decided, are the most refreshing. Much appreciated. 

And on our ride home, crossing a bridge by foot so as to spot the crocodiles (which we did) there were also wild elephants on the other side. I wish I could have captured that view for you, the low wide river and river bushes and hills sloping steeply behind it and two elephants, huge and ear flappy, eating in the centre patch of grasses, timeless, amazing, full of grace of the animal kingdom sort. 

Deep breaths, finger snapping appreciation for planet earth. And temperature.

My right hand looks this now, from Wednesday.

The girl (Omvica) who did it charged us way too much but she chattered in English and was 15 and could speak French and Spanish and a bit of Thai and good Chinese and English and Hindi and Nepali and she smiled and said I want to make it beautiful for you and the ink smelled like tea tree leaves and something else good and fresh. 

Afterwards Nura took us to buy saris (sarees) and it was a four part process of wrap and fabric and measurements and tailoring. We left small piles of dried henna on the shop floors, peeling the old colour, looking at the orange ink designs and waiting for it to darken, and it has darkened now. The fabric and chiffon and hand embroidery and colours have been matched and are under construction, so we will pick up the saris (sarees) and wear them out on Saturday for our last night in town. We oooh'd and ahhh'd each other and every colour has seemed to match who we are, midnight and bright and shiny and dignified, beautiful. Dinesh today said "I do not know why it is or what but it is something in our minds maybe and we just think women in saris are just so beautiful" and I agree, and I will never be able to wear it as naturally as the women here but I am so grateful to be able to share it, to try on, to feel the weighted beads and walk just a little bit taller. 

 The view out my window looks like this now, Kathmandu now. We left Lamahi on Tuesday night and had 11 hours of bumpy roads, routine now, familiar now, and then a dinner break at 10:30 and the women in the restaurant who kept it open for us wished us all safe journey and safe journey sounds to me as buen viaje did last year and amongst my face pressed to window glass to look up at stars and lightning behind hills and the occasional snatch of river roaring below I turned safe journey over in my head and the way it has been said to us so far. 

Midnight and a half found an accident on the highway and placed it for us, so we rolled to the side of the road with nothing else to do but wait so we did, rolled and tucked and bent and curved into some kind of sleep, until van door slid shut and we moved out, using our whiteness, our tourist-ness as a reason to bypass security checks and at one point two army men jumped in and we drove them to the next stop and they hopped out and tapped our van and we drove faster and the streets were empty, just empty, and shop doors closed and guarded with roll-y metal doors and we staggered back in to the Eco hotel and now breakfasts are fruit and Nepali yogurt (literally just so delicious) and vegetables and variety and there are so many more white people around and sounds. 

This is from the day I had to say goodbye. 

Here is some of the space where I would put words if I could, if I knew how to start. 

Here are some words: 

mothers group tikkas and flowers, pressed in hand and hibiscus, smudge foreheads and touch hearts, tell them thank you, you are so inspiring, this is amazing, we will carry your stories in our hearts, thank you because if I said more I would cry and I wipes under my eyes anyway as we turned and left the large and shady mango tree and wave wave wave 

and the kids ran out and ran to us and ran with us and we played against the teachers in a game of musical chairs under the holy tree with Nepali drum beats and danced and laugh laugh laughed and dusty bare feet and chanting names and sweet honey rolls for lunch and how do I tell you thank you for your students and time and how do I tell you we are probably not, probably not coming back and how do you say that 

walk down stairs and there are my students and I cannot look back I cannot say goodbye not one more time and I do not and the jeep bumps us away and this is the last time I see these faces and spaces and land and cows and rivers and infinity bridges

and pasta for early dinner at home, heavens door, and pack the big van and go and say thank you family, take one last picture how do I say I love you like this and hug Deepa and Surita and how do I say bye but in the van and through the window I namaste one last time

one last time

and we drive and drive and our eyes leak and drive me drive. 

And somehow something somehow sometime maybe someday I know I must come back I cannot shake it I cannot stay but I will come back. is that okay

Look!

I found the little prince again. I did not think I would find him in Nepal and then when I was buying 

these pants, he appeared, and now these are my favourite pants. 

It's funny because I saw these pants/the design during our first stay in Kathmandu and I said: mark my words these are my pants, I will find them again when we return. 

And in a different location than originally found, I found them, and the little prince, and now I can't help the feeling of right time right place, and now I also can't remove the little prince's words: just because I'm gone doesn't mean I've gone away.

And now I feel the need to tell you that like the fox, like the flower, this place has tamed me. This place I have made my own and it has made me and it might just be the three week rule talking, but maybe that is not such a 'just', either. And maybe this is how I know, when I find myself thinking of laughing stars and small planets full of lessons and lamplighters and what makes a rose one rose, not a wall of roses and wells in deserts and walls and snakes and moving your chair every minute of every day to watch the sunset. 

It is Friday now, and I leave on Sunday. 

I do not know how many times more I will write here, for this. So this is maybe, not the last of the things for my 29 days in Nepal. Maybe. 

As is: safe journey. 

I will see you again. Soon.

-k

in the jungle, the mighty jungle..

...we sleep in mud walled, tin roofed rooms with beds with resident red ants and princess canopy mosquito nets

in the most humid heat or hottest humidity I've yet experienced, easily above 40 degrees, and then humidity, and it is nighttime now. 

Oh oh oh, feel that. This is Jungle Heaven (hotel) in Bardia National Park, (south)west Nepal and this is where I am, this May 25th, no wifi, thank goodness, quiet and nature and hot hot. 

But never fear, because 

life is okay, and isn't that just the truth. 

Because today I rode on the back of an elephant and we rocked with every enormous step of her enormous legs and her tail would switch when I placed my hand on her back and I ran my feet over her sides and it was tough skin and coarse hairs and soft grey and pink in folds and nothing more than this and her eyes like billiard balls of soul and a trunk like evolution remembered function and hilarity at the same time and strength plowing on and on. 

We crossed muddy swirling rivers and stomped delicately through jungle forest ground, a pathway from times before, and I have scratches on my swinging legs from where the trees told me namaste and smack smack get that ant and flick that bug and rock and rock back and forth. 

Get this: the jungle...sounds like a jungle. it is real. and alive. The bird calls and howler monkeys and the occasional branch snap from unseen wild things and even the sun sounds like the jungle. I have been placed back in the world when humankind did not exist and how this will exist long after we finish our weird and wicked journeys here. Maybe not the rhinoceroses(because screw you poachers, and the market that demands it *really mad face*)one of whose path we crossed today, but what will likely outlive us is the way the sun settled itself between bare branches of stark trees on grasslands by edges of jungles and rocky banks of drying rivers, and the leaping of the tall deer and the scurry of the smaller ones and creepy spiders dangling on shoulders and tree stumps and elephant dumps...this will be here. At least that is the kind of timelessness I believe in...or maybe I am just hoping. I am just hoping so much that we don't mess this up for every other living creature around us, whether they are massive rhinos that grunt and charge you and then think better and bundle off crashing intothe bush   (adrenaline like this is what my ancestors faced down sometime, in ancient days of caves and wild and everything the same, prey predator hunted hunter)or the human-whistle-tune-bird that echoed in the distance, or the geckos that spring across the white washed wall in front of me, or the crickets roaring up around this jungle darkness, all. 

Watch your step, humans. There is so much more to where we live than just us.

In other news: it is one week until our last night in Nepal all together. 

Whatever/wuteva don't matter I don't care nope not affected by this hahahha noooooooopppppeeeeeee  

*stares at you* 

Here is my face from yesterday, our last day in the classroom: 

And I didn't cry ... probably because we will be returning on Tuesday for lunch and a final meeting with the teachers so I have postponed all my feelings until then so lalalalalalalala can't hear you don't tell me it is time to go. 

But it is, and by the time I post this and by the time you are reading this (a different now than the now I'm living this...now) I will be even closer and maybe this makes you happy (finally this crazy girl is coming home) but maybe it makes you look at your month and say wait that crazy girl is coming home? Where did the time go.

...and I just misspelled something in that last sentence and autocorrect was all: the word you want is 'here'. And I was like, no I promise I want where...

but here is where

 the time went.

time went here. Here. 

Truth: I am still here. And will be yet. And here is where I was and here is where I am and here is where I will be. 

I want to roll my body in paint and high five the wall I am looking at and I want to scratch the surface of the earth and get it under my fingernails and run my face over the tufts of grass around the path and I want to make something to tell me that I am here. 

The locks on the doors here are strange and simple and intricate all together, and this place is jungle heaven and in Lamahi, we learned yesterday that our hotel name literally translates into 'door to heaven' or 'heaven's door' and this is something. This is maybe how I've been feeling the divine every time I am greeted by namaste here and I think heaven is on earth where you learn to create yourself and your space into a broken and changing harmony, create who you are in space and person and place and peace and pain. That's what I think, what I take in every time I breathe  deep on the rooftop and right now feeling the sweat roll over my body because the power has turned off now and my fan is no longer the nighttime percussion to the wind instruments of the insects, feel so complete(ly) the heat, and that is everything I feel, I need, knowing I am constantly on the threshold of heaven for myself. 

And maybe I overstep and maybe this sounds too self-serving but I write this as a pinprick in the sky, less, because the only air I breathe is mine for a moment and if you asked me to (let) go, I would, and this life is not mine to keep but mine to live. That is all I can do.

Here. 

-k

future imperfect

If I had words for today, I would need words for yesterday, for such a string of yesterdays that stretch back and back and back. Back so far I could not tell you when they began or who began them or if there was a beginning because these days I cannot put my finger quite on anything, not words or emotions or thoughts, no matter how I try. 

So it goes that watching the bridge disappear in a square pattern behind us today, looking through that centre to the small dark green glimpse of beyond, feels like this. 

And so it is that the word belong appeared today in conversation and so it goes that I cannot help but sink into this place of recognition for me. 

And yes I know that we still have one week left in Dang and a further five days after that still back in Kathmandu, but at some point or other I am cornered by these thoughts on leaving. And I wrote and wrote and wrote today trying to figure out my thoughts on leaving and I asked how will I leave this place? 

These three weeks of momos and spicy sauces and dirt roads and black tea milk tea and rice and eating with my hands; of shopkeepers calling out namaste and children bowing their hands to their foreheads and children holding my fingers, the thin small boy from today who played with my hands and I chattered at him in English; of sunsets in hazy continental colours and the stars and the moon rise and squat toilets on bus rides and sunburns on my shoulders; of waving hands and reluctant smiles and saris and bangles and being white and market place bags of peppers and gourds; of prayer flags, incense, a perfectly un-placed sense of divinity and reality in the everywhere, the everyday; of bumpy roads and rusty jeeps and mud huts and water pumps and luxuries like clean sheets and air conditioning and kindness; of beads of sweat become rivers become laughter and glopping cement and the tink of bricks and sore hands and dirt on skin and river currents washing away; of serene cow faces and ugly bull horns and goats and goats and chickens and colour; of light, and skies, and people. The people. Always.

And I do not know how (i will leave)on the inside and yet: 

and yet I will. 

I will go and stay and leave and go and stay and leave until one day when I will ask myself how will I leave this place and I will not be able. I will not say, "I will", and I will not leave. But this day is not today, is not yet. I do not feel anything but the words 'I will' pressed deeper than everything else...maybe they were there first. Maybe I will always need them. Maybe. 

And maybe I am just thinking too grandiose for one small candle in this infinite universe and maybe I am. But maybe I am also trying to understand the how's that have grown into my journey, followed by the "will I leave" from that question.

And this happens, it does, especially since Nicaragua, this how game, this battle of the I wills. Because for all the leaving that is approaching like the dawn in a midnight sky, I know my I will's are followed by this, one word: return. 

But this one word I cannot promise for here, for now. I can dream it, for all the possibilities created in these last weeks, but I cannot say it. (Perhaps I never can, because life doesn't listen to plans, but the certainty scale is tilted differently in this case). 

And still. I know. 12 days. You do not need to tell me Kelly look at all the time you have! Look at it. Be there for it. 

This is something I do, know how to do. This I will do. This I promise you is not an earthquake for me; this does not stop me, to look at time, to acknowledge expiration dates....but that's not right now is it? There is nothing that will expire about this (except maybe my visa, technically), not within me, not without me. I just am telling you now that I see that I will leave. Soon. And I see it. And I see it. I know it is there. I know I will leave. 

It does nothing but sit in the corner and colour by number until I am back in an airport, and even then it will move behind me quietly and maybe just curl up under my seat and even when I return (.) home? it will still just be there on the edge, the periphery, noting all the ways here is not there is not this is not that, not 'home', not how it is called, changed by name now, and then it will sink in, with clean roads, and tall houses, and no chickens, and white people, and traffic lights, in the morning that does not sound the same and whole grain bread and catching my foot tan disappearing in socks, soft carpeted floors, my fingernails clean, no need for bottled water. 

This I know, and this I see. And I raise you the bet that however these next days go, they will not falter for knowing I will leave. This is like asking: How could we ever live less knowing we will die? Is not each moment designed exclusively for now and for you? 

I will not say carpe diem but I will say I do not have realize tattooed on me for nothing. 

Real eyes, like Buddha, like sunshine, like the divine you see in the you in me. 

I am here. 

I 

am here.

And I will leave.

And this is not that, is not perfect, is not wrong, is not the end.

This is. 

-k

today is May 19th

and I just wrote and immediately lost a good long post about this weekend, so instead I will give it to you like this: 

On Friday I met this Danish guy, the only other white person somewhat around Lamahi (go figure) and had a staunch discussion on democracy (huh), free trade (...mhmmm) and why the world is the way it is (he says: human nature to need someone to step on. I say: aiya). He doesn't think there is much (if any) suffering in Denmark, and I am raising an eyebrow even still. That's right, go wave your liberal institution flag around. I'm sure everything will always work in favour of capitalism and free trade and market liberalization and one day we will all definitely not be scratching our heads wondering why we stayed stuckin systems   systems systems of structural injustice. 

And then we went out out out out into the countryside to Deepa's house where I was struck motionless by dust swirls in afternoon light by red red blossoms in a green green tree and swallowed again by feelings of how on earth does our world even work and I thought maybe it was hopelessness but it isn't, it isn't. It is a sliding and realizing and I know one day my ideals will probably crumble and I can't avoid the steps the rest of the world seems to be taking but i'll try and try and try and in the process wonder if (Danish par example but not as scapegoat people) ever consider themselves so obviously as white people and where do lines divide and do they do they do they make a difference and where where how.

We tries Nepali...liquor....for no idea of what else to call it, and it reminded me of the candy fizz, and so that's how that went.

And we met Deepa's daughter and Dinesh told us her story (Deepa's), and I was overcome with the desire to wrap her and her tiny daughter in a hug and make her safe in this violent world somehow but nobody can do that, no one person can do that and she never asked. And again I wonder where the line goes between asking and needing and crossing and bleeding.

The food was spicy and amazing and we sat on plastic chairs and here I understood why people can sit and look and watch and I want to lose all sense of time someday and do just that. 

Saturday we drove to our hotel resort an I was overwhelmed by the luxury which even still is maybe 3 stars in Canada but soft pillows and a pool (!!!) and being served soft drinks when we first arrived four hours away from Lamahi and then the pleasure of sitting by a poolside, even if it was crowded, positively packed, with stating Nepali men. Because white women in bathing suits doesn't, I gather, happen often. And I could excuse most of the staring on account of that but still I tailspun into a small feminist thing about the male gaze, in all its manifestations. 

Aha. 

Food was not rice or roti (!!!) and we stayed up till a late 10:30 just hanging out. Bedtime, wake up to the sounds of our gecko friend stuck in the windowsill, 

and it is May 19th. 

And I woke up struck by this fact that May has slipped through my fingers somehow and so, a little bit, has this year, even though this present 2013 is not the same 2013 as two weeks ago, as two months ago. 

So that...happens.

And today we went to Lumbini.

The birthplace of Lord Buddha. 

I looked into temple cores and Buddha statue eyes and travelled by rickshaw and sweltered in humid heat and crickets blasted around us and it was quiet and it was not and I swear the Buddha could see my soul and I think now I'm still not sure how I feel, perhaps like someone has reached inside and a little bit gently but more firmly then anything brushed who I am and said this is who you are even to the parts I don't know yet. 

And time eclipsed itself and now now now we are home again, Lamahi with its bus horns and rice-or-roti and our wonderful hotel family and it is impossible but also not that I missed this room and this place. 

it is may 19th. 

how

even

do these things...

happen.

place. 

That is what I am uncovering here. Place and space and how it relates, identity, divinity, uncertainty. Poetry. 

This place.

ah.

-k

Tharu food from Friday. 

Nepali spirits.......

Our wonderful Friday evening hosts. Deepa is beside me. 

see you yesterday

[but first let me say that I am friends with the most prolific email writers in the whole entire world. Dhanyabad, you beautiful people. My name is safe in your mouth. 

And also that I have finished White Teeth (thank you, afternoon heat and ceiling fan for giving me the chance to do so).]

is what class 10b called to me as I left for lunch today. See you yesterday. Future present, past imperfect. The way it definitely is.

Look! 

I have received my first note from the students! The group of boys most okay with hanging out around us and most excited to introduce us to everyone and their peers and practice speaking and revel in it and debate in quick Nepali what the right word is for what and speak anyways and try and teach us so many Nepali words all together helped in our last brick-brigade line and then gave me that note. Said "when you are leaving for your country we will very much remember you". 

*takes deep breath and looks at all the feels* 

Today we technically finished what we came here to do on the construction agenda, brick walls all laid and communication between us and the two workers finally at a hilarious and decent level. Highlights from our last days on the scaffolding: our older Dhai ( brother, because he always called us "sister") dancing to some Hindi music we were playing, several times, and the way he smiles fully with all his teeth, our younger Dhai telling us "no problem" while fixing potentially fatal bamboo and twine set ups...also telling us "no dancing" as we perched precariously on the edge, making younger Deepa laugh when concrete dripped on my head, holding older Deepa's hand, shaking the brick dust from my eyes, going down to the river for buckets of pani, water, (...there's a river, standing between...), the way our Dhais flip flops squish on the concrete mix, how they tap-break the bricks just right, the way the string contraption works for leveling the walls, ska-wulching the cement on a new layer, looking at the walls and thinking, my hands touched those bricks. I laid some of that foundation, I took part in creating that space. Perhaps a little less efficiently then our Dhais, perhaps not ably to carry as many bricks on my head as our Didis and Ammas (sisters and mothers)who helped out, but still. That is something. 

This is my foot tan of the last 6 days at the worksite. I am amazingly proud of it, being of the persuasion that awkward foot tans are excellent. 

...

When the boys came to help, they swirled around in a whirlwind of energy and fast talking youth-ness. They asked me what religion I have and I stopped fully for a moment, looking at the patterns of brick stack in front of me, trying not to fidget. Am I a god(s)less creature? Am I some heathen foreign woman with no divine direction, no moral code, no religious institution behind me? So I answered "I don't have any", but I don't know how to translate it, if it does. How many times have I tried to put words to whatever truth it is I live by, and how many times have I never been able to. How I have not found a name that suits, one that fits more than Kelly Grace. And what else is grace? But how I do not know. In our cold white north, our massive country of leaves and stays and fresh water and misplaced senses of belonging, how I've looked and kept an eyebrow raised and still not found a way to say how it is I believe (if). And how it has not mattered in the way of who you are as you where and how and if you have a religion too. I will stop to let whatever time of day it is cross the street and let it be. I just don't know for me, and not like an agnostic not know, not a denial, but also not some confession of truth, either. 

....bet that was least expected after a picture of my feet. 

Though here now I am willing to write (willing myself? Or just wanting to?) that I believe in my groove, in the real eyes I've told my skin to never forget and who was with me when that happened, in all the stages of its happening, and how I will change with it when I need to and how this is okay too, and ending words with whys and ys, that made me want to write us, because y and u is so close together and I believe in these things meaning something if they do, do because fundamentally they are, if you let this life get to you and the sweat to bead for you and hearts to leak for you and with and around and there for you and here. For you. 

These are the things, at least some, that sunsets like last night remind me of and make me feel, the way you can put the stars on a map and think you know the way home but identity does not happen like that. This I promise you, of all the promises I may have made before, we are not like clay pots intent on shattering, more like mud roofs, where when we slide, you can make castles and mud pies. This is 

how it makes me feel

to be doing what I am currently doing. 

So bug bites, scratch on and remind me of my human in me, this skin and these feet and these blister thumb hands. 

-k