Home is Nowhere

My memories are like the Wailing Wall--

they are all that's left of so many people I never wanted to say goodbye to.

All I can do is cry after them

and try to imagine a life not constantly marked

by a stopwatch in an invisible hand.

I am running as fast as I can! Every moment feeling the pressure of trying to make things matter; make something count and anything important...

Will anyone remember this fleeting, frenzied soul?

It seems those I don't want to forget do not share my urgency,

but they do not know as well as I that most relationships end at goodbye.

I live in a different time zone, accelerated to a level of frantic unrest that no one should have to fathom.

People think I'm in a hurry,

and I am.

I want to make impressions on hearts.

Sometimes I want to settle down!

Sometimes I want not to leave what is good.

I depart the station as the train arrives.

I'm writhing in pain.

Dear Africa, will I see you again?

Have you forgotten me, Belgium, though I spent precious years with you? Do you remember that last day we shared, when I gripped tightly your grassy earth and prayed not to be pulled away?

Kansas, Kansas my contempt for you grows

but I desperately need Missouri.

San Francisco, New Orleans, Cape Town, Soweto, Chicago, London,

Charleston! I plead with you to take me back and take me in. Never let me go.

I cry out for all my stillborn friendships.

Parts of me have died! Have been left on far corners of the wide earth.

I wear black to mourn my future losses.

I have no one. Home is nowhere.

A Hard Rain is Sure to Fall

“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, since that is the end of all mankind, and the living should take it to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7:2).

I am no more abruptly saddened than when something good happens to me. Following every peak is an inevitable decline, and everything good will come to an end. I would sooner live a stoic existence, because if I never had reason to be elated or excited, I would never feel disappointed. I wouldn’t know the happiness I was missing, and wouldn’t have anything to compare to its absence once it was inevitably gone. For example, when I am excited about my feelings for a guy and his feelings for me, my excitement quickly turns to doom once something finally happens between us. I know that it can end in nothing but sadness. I will have to leave and go back to school (or, leave school and come home again), and suffer the misery of pining. Or even worse, I will discover that I don’t like the guy as much as I thought (or vice versa), leaving me let down, confused and disillusioned. So it is better for me not to become attached to anyone or anything, anywhere I find myself. Ecstasy makes normalcy feel like death, and happiness is fleeting, so I am better off maintaining constant sorrow—it is the only sure thing in life. After all, life is fleeting, and the only things worth doing on this earth are not done for this earth at all, but for the house of the Lord. Everything on Earth is futile, and only things done for the Kingdom of Heaven will bring true and abiding happiness.