My body is not closed off:
so few my defenses
that the bare trees wound me
the sight of the pencil-thin wires
sketched in fast strokes over
the faster falling of light from
sky is its own type of pain:
                  the world is alive
                  all so raw
yet when I try to call you by name
all I can speak of is the shadow
under the brambles
a birds wing tracing its arc
along an invisible current
(I too feel the thing that
carries me, unseen)

These old brick homes cloth
themselves in ivy, white paint
another year fresh on the shutters
(I thought the word was shudders
for years, as a body should
learning to shut out a touch as
gentle as the afternoon light)
I can taste air pouring into my
body. She forgets each time how
naked skin can feel.
      
He never felt the Spirit move
as I did-- beneath a rain-full cloud
or in the handful of wind tossing
the lime buds of spring
                        and how could I
tell
him
why
       the crocus propping its stem
against the falling barn filled me
till the tears ran quietly over the
banks of my eyes, when he'd
forgotten that creeks, too, flood
in spring rains.
        

sprouts

I've returned to this house, this city, that I've never really possessed -- as a geography beyond the river & woods, the scattering of friends homes, and those old buildings I'd circled through that nothing leads me back to now.

It feel strange, to come to rest here without a plan to leave, to begin anew in a city that's familiar and still unknown. It's been seven years since I spent a spring here, walking in my neighborhood I'm amazed at the magnolia flowers dropping beneath the branches like pink snowfall, the bright lime buds, the perpetually cloudy grey skies.

I feel uncertain. Uncertain of my path here. Though I've lived almost four years with this idea: The untied knots can be redone... of 'a covenant with the land': eventually one must come home, one must come to rest and mix their blood and sweat with earth. I don't know how long this city will be home, but I am here.

I keep dreaming in a mixture of Spanish and English, missing my life in Guatemala. I wandered to the international food market, bought plantains and searched for masa. I'm not ready for the faces of my friends to retreat into memory, for their stories, our story, to settle. 

The floor of my bedroom is a half-finished unpacking I've abandoned momentarily for cooking, decorating cupcakes, making crafts, taking walks to pick spring bouquets, and reconnecting with the handful of dear friends I still know here.

I have so many questions of what "ordinary" life will be.

I've decided I don't want to leave

After 5-days of backpacking: La Torre: the highest non-volcanic point in Central America.

(and I convinced everyone to paint their faces.)