for the homeless man on the corner of candler park blvd, that he might use poetry as a blanket for sleeping on the street.

I really like patrick rosal.
---
sometimes when I read Rosal
on the bus
we drive past homeless men,
yellowed fingers gripping cigarettes, puffing
defiantly at you
(or maybe just smoking)
and unafraid to hold my gaze through
the tinted windows
of the bus.

in the midst of so much beauty,
swept up in electric verse
youforgetsocialnorms
and don't look away.

we tint bus windows for equal anonymity
because I'm too poor to own a car
and you're too poor to ride the bus
(is it always us verses them?)

we look straight ahead and pretend
that no one's watching
or we watch out the windows, protected by
tinted glass
and think he can't
see me looking.

poetry throws into harsh light
my lack of human contact, just like his and
I'm not yelling at him,
but whispering beauty silently to myself
and I'm hoping he'll look back
and that he might have read Rosal.
-4/25/08

cleavage

what makes a woman?
is it her eyes nose mouth hair
(movie stars care about
what's real, don't (aren't) they?)
or is it her uterus, ovaries, breasts?

when there are two lines where your breasts
should be
and a scar on your stomach where
they took your uterus (and an ovary too, for good measure),
are you still a woman?

what if you lose all your hair and
they had to take out both ovaries, too, but neither
is working
or stopping
it?

cancer leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.

is a woman a presence:
a mother, sister, daughter, friend
or is she something you cry over
someone rubbing your back and murmuring
it'll be okay (noitwon'tnoitwon'tnoitwon't).

does being scared that you're
no longer a woman
make you one?

or is it being courageous,
buying bathing suits with
prosthetic
cups, and giving tight hugs that reveal just how
bony (flat)
you are?

"I am a woman, and these are where my breasts used to be."
--20 april 2008

so, God, here's a couple of things that are twirling around inside of me.

first, kyle. god, please be with him right now. I know that he's struggling and I know that senior year is especially scary, particularly when you don't know what you're doing next year. Lord, just help him to realize that you want him to pursue you with his life just as badly as he wants to, but that he needs determination and drive and passion to do it, and he can't settle for anything less than his best. I know he has it, God, he just needs to throw it out there unashamedly. And lord, bless josh for his role in that whole thing, particularly mediating it, and help him to realize that he is such a strong voice for you in kyle's life. it's incredible to me how he can be both a friend and a voice of reason that's older and wiser. it's really, really beautiful, god, and I know that kyle needs it so badly. thank you for giving him josh. thank you for teaching josh how to love like you love.

god, for the boys at chi phi right now (or whichever frat that is), keep them safe. they're being really loud, and I'm a little worried for them. keep them safe, okay?

thank you for noor. and for the people that came to qur'an bible tonight. god, help me to increase those numbers exponentially. lord, with you, all things are possible. please help that to carry over into fall.

thank you for rylee. please help keep teaching me how to be a friend to her when she's stressed and its' the end of the year. keep us close.

god, thank you so much for josh. but thank you for your role in it; in everything. It astounds me how incredibly central you are to his life, and how central I try to keep you to my own, and I love that he is a model for me in that. God, thanks for letting me help him when he needs helped and for teaching me how to let him in when I need it. thank you for the fact that he "spot-checks" me every 20 seconds, and that we both have that weird, "look at the crowd and see most strongly the person who makes you so happy."

god, thank you for how incredibly happy he makes me. thanks for late night rock band with 30 year olds that he admires, and for the field next to the Laird Barn, and for how my heart beats faster when I come around the corner and see him walking toward me. thanks for how this jacket smells and for how it instantly brings me back to him.

thank you that he likes me.

God, he really needs you this week, and especially this summer. bless his studies, Lord, like only you can. help him (and me in the same vein) to learn to rely on your for everything, even school, which the world conditions us to think we can do alone. we can't. Help whatever he studies to multiply over and over and help him to see beyond it to the future.

Thanks, father, that his future is so incredibly bright.

His successes are not my failures.

thank you for teach for america, and help me to learn to support him in everything, not just in a program that might lead him to atlanta. would that be great? sure. but that's not a necessity. because the thing is, if it's meant to be, you'll let it be the way it's supposed to. and I trust you implicitly, I just need to learn to jump.

god, help me to leap. soon'd be great. help me to rely on you so fully it overflows. about classes, about finals, about josh, about the future, about jordan.

with hope. god, your hope is incredible. your hope is the confident expectation of a coming good and an anchor for my soul.

I trust you, Lord. Help me to see what in my life is unfavourable, and how to cut it out. lord, if any aspect of josh and my relationship is unfavourable and dirty, lord, please show me how to stop it so that I may and we can progress on together towards infinity.

solamente contigo.

last night, josh took me to a club meeting for a division of young life called capernaum. it's basically young life, but for kids with disabilities. it was, honestly, one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. like... it was dancing and watching high school kids with down's and autism and probably a bunch of different things singing along to open mike night and dancing around in a circle and... it was ridiculously fun. and at the end, there was a message, which andy, the leader, gave. And he looked at a couple of the kids and said, josh, did you know that you're fearfully and wonderfully made? and stephanie, did you know that you're made in God's image?

and she looked at him and said, "really?"

and I realized that this is where God is. and I am absolutely in love with what He does, and who he loves.

please remember me happily, by the rosebush laughing with bruises on my chin

I realized tonight at church just how happy I am. And it's great. Finals are coming, sure, but I'm being productive and getting a lot done, especially tonight, and I refuse to be worried.

And that's great. You know? As is the fact that everything is better with Rylee (things were kind of shaky and weird for a while. But I love that they aren't anymore.) and that Laurie's sister and parents came to visit, and... everything.

Last night josh and I were just laying in the dark talking for, like, two hours, and he asked me to tell him something interesting. So, I told him that bumblebees are physically too large to fly on such small wings and they defy the laws of physics, and ostriches have the world's largest eggs... and that I think I'm falling in love with him.

which feels kind of like trying not to throw up. Not the falling in love part, but the telling him part.

he smiled widely and laid his head on my chest and whispered that he thought his heart skipped a beat. which helped with the trying-not-to-hurl feeling.

I'm not really sure why I'm writing this down. it's funny, because it's so visible in my head it's almost like I could transport myself back there, tout de suite. but I know it won't be in a month or so. or maybe it will. who knows. but it's not worth the risk, because it was beautiful and terrifying and almost like loving him. which I hope I'll figure out how to do soon.

anyway, I have faith. in a lot of things right now.

hope is the expectation of a coming good and an anchor for our souls.

shalom isn't the absence of something, but the presence of something waiting.

happy almost passover.

I really like the name Raphael for a kid. I guess it's a boys name. I just think Rafi is an adorable nickname.

I still like Aureliano, but tagging a kid with Raphael Aureliano is too much, I think. -grins-

And Purselane. It's a flower, but I like it.

(text message conversation)

emily: so, by the way, thanks for having an opinion on my sweater tonight. I know that sounds silly, but it surprised me that you cared and it helped. if only because I can't make decisions.

josh: haha, well, I feel like my opinion is slightly biased and could mislead you, because I also think your hair looks best at 730 when my alarm goes off.

----

that made me smile more than anything else today. and today was a really good day. : )

I feel like moving to the rhythm of your grace

tonight I sat outside with God and just talked. We have a lot of conversations like that, and I love it. It's like, very stream of consciousness, and he kind of inserts answers by having me talk around something a lot of times. And it's beautiful. Or, it is to me, anyway.

I love that no one answered their phones because we needed to have this time.

So, basically, I realized that whatever grade I get in organic chemistry doesn't matter in the way I think it does. Because the thing is, God's kept this passion alive in my heart about my future and made it an unreconcileable reality to me. Which means that he's going to get me into med school, because I honestly believe that's his will, and he's going to do it with an A- or a B. Because God is a heck of a lot of a bigger deal than silly grades. So I need to stop beating myself up about tomorrow, and not go into the room seconds away from throwing up, but rather, recognize how wonderful he is to me, and go up to the folder with a smile and a song and the knowledge that I did my best and he's holding my hand.

I can do this, you know. I really can. Even if it means not being as good of a student as I was in high school. I'm trying just as hard. And if I'm not in Phi Eta Sigma, or whatever, that's fine. Because I'm going to get where I need to be and God's going to show me how to get there.

I've also been thinking a lot about Josh and my relationship. I feel like it really deepened a lot sunday night, after church, when we went out onto the benches to pray. I do need to go to Jordan. I realize that now. It terrifies me, but it's true.

I just sent the email to jeff, the guy from church organizing it, and told him that I'm going. I'm getting over my fears of inadequacy and just going. Abandon and all. Recklessly.

But back to Josh. I told him part of it, but basically, he talks about joining the peace corps before grad school for two years, and it scares me just because I realize that I could still be committed to this then. Very possibly. And he graduates in basically a year. Which is... not a lot of time.

But you know what I realized tonight? I realized that if this is God's plan for Josh, and part of that plan is me staying in his life, it's going to be an incredible ride for both of us, but it'll happen. Right now, I feel his hand really, really strongly in this relationship, and I love feeling like I'm growing closer to Josh and together we're growing closer to God. It's beautiful, and it's doable, and it's what I have and want, right now. In terms of what'll happen if he joins the peace corps, well, that's for the future to worry about. When it gets here, if it's right, it'll happen.

I'm starting to believe that about my future, too. That there are ways to get it to work out, and that when I graduate from med school and finish my residency, I'm going to pack up and go and if I'm with someone and they're right for it, they'll come with me. It's a give and take, yes, and this is a calling, and there's a way to reconcile the two.

Hope is the confident expectation of a coming good, and an anchor for our souls.

Thank heavens for that.

I miss the still of the silence as you breathe out and I breathe in

So, my aunt jamie sent me an incredible email. As did marissa. And I love that I got them both on the same day at the same time and read one after the other slowly, and without stopping, and it was like eating a huge piece of angel food cake. Really, really wonderful, basically.

And I've rerealized, or perhaps even better than the first time, how much beauty is in the world. And how much I love these two people.

Jamie added a ps email that she sent afterwards:

Marriage, the good side:

I’m married to my best friend.
We laugh all the time.
It’s us against the world, every day.
We think the same thoughts so often it’s scary.
We have 25 years of shared experiences and memories, most of them sweet.
Each is the first person the other turns to when something good or bad happens.
We ask each other for advice constantly, really listen and consider it, and then have complete freedom to ignore it without anyone’s feelings getting hurt.
He still takes my breath away when I see him in a crowd.
Each of us knows the other is doing the best we can on any given day.
I can tell him the ugliest things about me and he doesn’t judge me...he just prefers to concentrate on the good stuff.
When one of us is wrong and behaves ungraciously, selfishly or outrageously, we own up to it and apologize.
We forgive, and forgive, and forgive...and forget.
We understand the importance of leaving the past in the past.
We both know how lucky we are.

---
And I was thinking about that a lot last night. Last night Josh and I actually went out on a date, which was really funny because it was totally not something we really do very often. And from him setting off his car alarm on purpose while I waited in it, and my spilling sweet and sour sauce all over my skirt and his car, and our almost getting locked out on the roof of the movie theatre when we took a different route out, and then watching the KU/UNC game with a heap of his friends... I realized that most of my memories are sweet, too. In fact, almost all of them are. And the ones that aren't can be, if you look at them in the right context.

He's very seriously considering the peace corps for two years after he graduates, before grad school. And that's incredible, and would probably be an unforgettable experience for him. Is it bad that when he talks about it, I love the idea of it, but at the same time, my heart hurts? It shouldn't, right? I mean, that's a while from now. It's just that I don't feel like this is very short term. And that's strange, I know, and very high school of me. But it's true.

He wrote a song about part of my aunt jamie's email. I forwarded the email to him, and she said the following:

"I say that marriage has got to be an “eyes wide open” commitment — one you make knowing that the person you marry:

• is imperfect,

• will make choices you don’t agree with,

• will go through emotional/spiritual challenges they may choose to exclude you from (such as the death of someone they love, or the loss of a job or dream), and

• quite possibly will change in ways that you’re not going to like and can’t control. "

He played it for me last night. I think it was called "eyes wide open," and it was really, really honest. kind of painful, but real. which is kind of the point, I think. he totally didn't want to. and he was mortified and nearly walked out of the room afterward without looking at me. it means more to me than he realizes that he stayed and turned around.

so. so so so.