For the first time

I feel less like running away than usual
I feel less like throwing my walls up
I feel less like hiding

I love
The way you kiss my fingertips slowly
Your closed eyes when we kiss

How you cried, that night
When I was unhappy
And it had nothing to do with you

When you push my hair away from my face
When you call me beautiful
You say it as if you are in awe

How whenever we see a child wherever we are
You point it out, look at me and
Smile
As if you want to share that moment with me

How we call hugs
Presents
So that we give each other something
Everyday

How you listen to everything
I have to say
Even if you are so tired

I felt torn between the past and the future. Looking at old pictures while I was back in med school, I miss the way life was so much simpler then. You wake up, grab a cup of coffee, attend classes, go to lunch with friends and hear the latest hospital gossip, attend more classes (while pretending NOT to be asleep), then simply hang out before going home. There was a sense of freedom in the predictability and simplicity of life. Then, it was okay to goof off once in a while.

Now, I face responsibilities, expectations, and the unpredictable. A mistake can lead to consequences I dare not think about. My nights are filled with fitful dreams... I have changed, and so have my friends of long ago. We are separated not only by space, but also by the hurried pace of our lives, our jobs, our families, and the people we have become.

I have never felt more lonely or alone than today...

Then a small surprise, I receive a message from a friend I haven't heard from in years. Words of support and encougement in a couple of sentences. Just what I needed. Serendipity, coincidence, or fate? Imagine, me, hanging on to a couple of sentences written by a person half a world away!

As usual, my thoughts have run away with me. Perhaps I needn't worry so much. If a hapless **** can grow in the most unfriendly circumstance, then perhaps I, too, can brave my way through all this.

The dark alleyway glimmered with sighs.  
The lost, the weary, and the agitated gathered here for meaning.  
Those who had found nothing and those with nothing to lose stood shoulder to shoulder in the cascading rainfall. Waiting, the waiting was always the worst part.  
The walks, the receiving, the humiliation, none of it compared to the waiting.  

There was no certainty with the waiting.  There was always a certainty with the walks, as long as your legs moved and your feet could withstand your weight you could walk, and as long as there were the cursed there were the scoffers.  


But waiting, waiting has no agenda.  

With time misery etches its name into the souls of the wandering in the manor of strife and downcast faces.  Those who had forgotten the wandering blotted out the memory of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters.  

Sons and daughters and former flames were cast out into the din, possession was no more.  Any possession would be an enlightened experience even if it meant the wandering were the possession.  
Love, compassion, peace, joy. None.

Lost...


The only virtue was humility.  Humility and self-control.  What the wondering seek is to be found. And to be found is to live. And to live is to have faith. And to have faith is to experience joy. And to experience joy is to find meaning.  

The wandering-found.

TWO loves had I. Now both are dead,
And both are marked by tombstones white.
The one stands in the churchyard near,
The other hid from mortal sight.

The name on one all men may read,        
And learn who lies beneath the stone;
The other name is written where
No eyes can read it but my own.

On one I plant a living flower,
And cherish it with loving hands;      
I shun the single withered leaf
That tells me where the other stands.

To that white tombstone on the hill
In summer days I often go;
From this white stone that nearer lies
I turn me with unuttered woe.

O God, I pray, if love must die,
And make no more of life a part,
Let witness be where all can see,
And not within a living heart.