I Should Be Reading

It’s been a long, long week. For whatever reason, I thought Monday was Thursday all day long. Never mind the fact I have different classes, and, oh, it was only the first day of the week. It was really disappointing when Tuesday was Tuesday and not Friday.

Now, tonight, it’s been kind of a long day, and I’m just ready to sleep, but I don’t get to go to bed until my commitments are over at 10:30.

At the earliest. I’m not a night person; I have to get up to run at 6:20 tomorrow, and I just want to get some quality sleep. Mornings are so much more productive for me than any other time. Also, today was hot, which takes a lot out of me. I guess Iowa has this sense of humor with the weather: one it’s October, let’s crank the heat up from 60 to 85. That’ll be hilarious.

Let me tell you, Iowa, it isn’t. I’m never living in Iowa again once I graduate. Growing up in Northern Illinois the climate wasn’t all that different, but it gets tiring when you live in college housing without AC. Really tiring. All that said, I don’t know if I’ll ever escape the Midwest. No one will ever convince me it isn’t the most beautiful place on earth. From the sand dunes of Michigan, to the original- and old-growth forests of the same state’s upper peninsula, to the few remaining prairies of Iowa, to the breathtaking lakes of Minnesota, and everything beyond all that, I will always love the views and beauties of this little part of the world.

I’ve watched bison travel in herds across South Dakota. I’ve fallen in love with the waterfalls of the UP. I’ve driven through the varying beauty of Wisconsin.

Above all, I found God in the sand dunes of western Michigan.

And as I write this, it so suddenly pours rain. That’s the beauty I cannot live without. Unpredictable, varied, never-ending beauty every way the head turns and the wheels drive.

The Midwest is home, now and always.

Meanwhile, I should be reading for politics class.

Paying Attention

When I write poems in poetry writing class, am I paying attention or just doodling with words? It feels like what I write is irrelevant, my mind wandering on my experiences. Here’s two short ones I wrote today.

An Elegy for Belly Fat

The gut is gone, security lost;

I slouch in my chair,

with nowhere

to place my hands.

They used to rest

below my chest,

on my lost soft mess of flesh.

Untitled

The coffee’s gone,

my morning’s done;

life is sad,

just like that.

I cannot wait,

until the date

my mug’s refilled,

when

frail happiness

is rebuilt.

Post-Mortem

his head was hollowed and his brain

on scales–was this a trick to prove

fore-knowledge after death?

-Wole Soyinka

It’s been nearly a year since a devastating loss I faced. His name was Max. He was a dear friend of mine, and I still think of him very regularly.

I wouldn’t say we grew up together, but we did spend time together throughout our lives. In high school, though, he changed mine, which has left an impact on me. He died when we were both only eighteen, and now I made it to nineteen. He would have six weeks before I did.

After he died I suffered. Following that, my life changed drastically. Now, a year later, I faced another loss, but it parted me quickly and left me joyful. Like losing a diseased limb, not that she was bad, but that the loss tore out a piece of me, but a piece that was not functioning with the rest of my body. She didn’t die, though. I left her, or she left me. It happened one way or another.

Now I have another loss I’m facing, which comes in forty-four hours. This loss I knew about longer than Max, but not as long as her. This loss is a temporary loss, and one which will bring healing. Not my healing, as with the limb; his healing, as he goes home to allow his mind to relocate itself.

Mend.

God has been good to me, even though things are difficult. He has rewarded me for the weeks I spent close to him, by granting me consolation of the recent loss of her and the upcoming loss of him.

But tears are still flowing, not as I write this, but daily at other times.

Loss reoccurs throughout life.