Before I knew you
I thought you’d changed, too
Thank you, you proved me wrong

We made plans, they ended
It was good we wanted
You said you should be moving on

Without any warning
I woke that morning
When you were gone

Left alone, my plans remain the same:
I’m here to do good, it’s not my choice
The cards were dealt, I’ll play my hand—
I’m fine this is no sacrifice

But since I’ve been here
My problem seems clear—
A sickness metronomed

The volunteer’s life
Is filled with small fights
But my disease has blown

Into war with *****
An acid stomach
And no connection home

I see it, believe it, that decency persists
This place is not what it is, but what we’ve made it
We’ve learned to give and take the bad and good
But to see ourselves outside ourselves is how we’ll change it

A place with palm trees
Dead farms and disease
In my students

I saw a pain that
They didn’t know yet
Would break them as they grew

And these ignored ones
These poorly born ones
They had no need for hope

Yet before I knew them
They gave me more than
They took to feed their own

I thought I knew what they could show
That good escapes all circumstance
But though I help them, I cannot love them
My strength’s abandoned romance

And still I’m wretching
My sickness spreading
It’s in my gut

I see your face in
The ripened rice which
They have begun to cut

In the evenings
I walk what once were green fields
Now dirt-blonde husks

That stab the air
The color of your hair
My stomach churns

Hope is useless
And I’ve abused it
I think I’ll leave it on its own

But I keep working
The sickness lurking
Well, that’s how hardship’s earned