I want to be on the road back to you.
To be closing the distance between us
and marking time by how much nearer it brings me to you.

Maybe the world is too small to hold us.
The heart too fragile to take this on.
My words too weak to carry the weight
of all that is
and all that is to come.

I miss you. Even now. Though you have yet to leave.

For Cath...

...because I understand... and I don't... and either way, we'll help each other through it.


"When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same."
(Toni Morrison)

"I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings,
its malignity."
(Sylvia Plath)

"Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning."
(Sylvia Plath)

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am."
(Sylvia Plath)

For some, travel is 'vacation'. A time for relaxation, a change from the usual. An extravagance.

For others, it is a requirement for life. Nourishment. A need. Not a destination, but the entire reason.
A way into the world, not an escape from it.

It has been difficult to reconcile this part of my new life. The inability to pick up and travel. The need to be in one place. To stay as close to him as I can.

I carry with me the places I have been, but the temporary clipping of the wings is still difficult to face at times. It is hard to explain to anyone who has not stepped into other cultures and across foreign lands. There is a part of yourself that you meet on such journeys. And though you never knew you were missing it, later, you will wonder how you survived before it was found.

Hiking North Korea, 2006

I watched the storm roll in tonight. Dark clouds on the horizon.

I knew from past experience the way that it would roll over, flood the land, send people, dogs, insects running for cover.

I did not trust that it would blow over. I told myself that it was better to find shelter. To search for somewhere to hide and wait it out. I told myself that it would be dangerous to stand and watch it. Stupid to not expect the downpour.

But for once, I ignored the voice that tells me when to hide. I pulled up a chair, brought out a blanket, and drank tea while the clouds began to approach.

Several times, I doubted my decision. I imagined the sky opening up and soaking me through... but I stayed the course, and watched the sky light up again and again with each strike to the mountain.

Tonight, I am stronger than I am weak... and I will try to carry that knowledge with me, because the rain has yet to fall.

From 'Possession' by A.S. Byatt...

"What is it? My dear?"

"Ah, how can we bear it?"

"Bear what?"

"This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"

"We can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world."
"And every day we shall have less. And then none."

"Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"

"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here,
this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love,
we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."


Amy Bloom, author

"Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner."

Me, the night I arrived in El Paso to be with Christian

He stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at me with the smile I fell in love with almost a year ago. And even though I couldn't stop staring at him and held his hand just to be sure that he was real, it also felt like the most natural thing in the world.

How is it that I fit in a dusty Texas border town? How is it that we can pick up this easily after all this difficult time apart?

Tomorrow, I will have to see him dressed in his uniform for the first time. A difficult thing since it reminds me why we were separated to begin with and what might separate us still.

I will continue to negotiate my way into this new life. Marrying the old with the new. Blending our lives together and starting again.

Of all the places our lives can take us, the best place is to love.


Noor Al Hussein, Former Queen of Jordan

"This is the first time you've acted so dramatically on your instincts. In time you'll find that they always point you in the right direction. You'll also prove that you can be financially self-sufficient, which is a vital piece of knowledge for women the world over. And you will continue to challenge yourself... until one day a kindred spirit will inspire you to make a leap of faith in someone else..."


written in Thailand, December of last year
"I was sure that I knew who I was before you came into my life. I was sure that I knew who I was, what I wanted my life to be. But even though I tried to keep you at arms length, you sat so near to my heart that you unnerved me completely. I loved parts of you that I did not yet know existed in myself. I felt completely at peace when I was with you, which scared me more than I can explain, because I was sure that I was already at peace before you. I am scared of leaning on someone else.

When you left me, something in me just fell apart. You left me. And I know that you didn’t mean to, and I never meant to fall in love with you… but you offered me everything I’d ever wanted in someone… and all the things I didn’t know I needed, and then you left anyways. Because you had to, I know.

And now, you offer yourself to me so willingly. But do you even know who I am? Surely you don’t, or you would hold your heart more carefully. For I am still just a scared girl. Still worried she won’t be pretty enough, smart enough, successful enough. I am the girl who wants to be a romantic, but has no idea how to go about it. Who wants to be a career woman, but feels empty when she is. I am the girl who wants to be a caregiver, but is still afraid that she’s not even all that good at taking care of herself. I am a selfish girl who ran away from you to face herself… and who doesn’t want to know herself in a world without you.

I am this girl, and yet you know this, you always have, and you still want to be with me. Love me, even.

From 'Learning to Float' by Lili Wright:

"The bottom line is there's just no telling with men and women. Not really. Not ever. Even when everything's settled; it's not. Even when there's no way, it's all still possible."

"May the struggle to grace was grace; maybe the struggle to love was love. Maybe you didn't have to get anywhere, you just had to go."

"... and isn't that what we all wanted? A man who let us walk the beach alone."


From poetry by Mary Oliver

"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?"


From 'Recipe for a Perfect Marriage' by Morag Prunty

"Joy did not come natrually to me. I always grabbed so hard that I crushed it. Examined it until I found a flaw; or tried to make itmore than it was. It would always turn too quickly to disappointment. I found that when happy, I held my breath and waited for it to fly away. I waited all my life for joy to come and kidnap me as it had that summer with Michael.

The one place I never bothered looking for it was inside myself."

There are moments
in which my body
aches for you
already
though you are not yet
gone.

I wake some mornings with
small spaces opening up
in my heart
dark corners
where you can be hidden
away
in safety
but without light.

I cannot promise
that they will not find you
here
I am not sure
that they will
let you
stay
but if I could
I would hide you
until we could find
another way.

For Christian

The Gift
By R.S. Thomas

Some ask the world
and are diminshed
in the receiving
of it. You gave me
only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.

For my Mom... A brave women who has yet to realize so

The journey
By Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

For R... One of the bravest women I am lucky enough to know...

To Have Without Holding
By Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed in the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
you float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.