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Spring and

the new leaves, vibrant green and deftly-lined
unroll like
wet butterflies




I have met Ethan Rafal,
which is something I have wanted to do for a while.
I heard about his forays into Uganda and Darfur, saw one of his photo exhibits, and even saw him speak at a Save Darfur Coalition event earlier on,
but I never actually met him.

What did I expect? A reed shaken with the wind?

I didn't have any concrete expectations of meeting him except maybe to hear some part of his story that would further affect my own.

I didn't have any plans to follow up a mutual introduction - I knew I wanted to meet him as if only good could come of it (and if I did not, to wonder forever what might've come from it). I wanted to meet him the way that two similarly shaded puzzle pieces with corresponding structure look like they should fit regardless of whatever picture that the puzzle might be supposed to look like.

The thing at that time is not to finish the puzzle but to just put those two pieces together.
I just wanted to meet him.


I'm very grateful for a remarkable turn of events and to Nelson Pavlosky for introducing us. This makes me think I may have been expecting something which I did not admit to myself, but which I nonetheless found.

As if connecting these two pieces might also connect their two halves of the puzzle.

I think,
he helps me believe that my stories are real
and that I didn't just dream them up like I thought I did with Readin' on a Dream. It was so good, but nobody else had heard of it. I began to wonder if I'd just invented the memory I thought I had.

It's disorienting when the things which seem like they should be so influential
seem the most likely to be all in your imagination.

I was thinking about what I would say, if I ever get to exchange and compare stories with him, and I feel like a hypocrite for feeling as if speaking with him somehow enables me to act on these stories, and for feeling as though somehow I am more encouraged to do this than I was alone. And by 'alone' I mean,

[now see,
if I could tell you exactly what I mean,
then I think I wouldn't be playing this warping mental game of 'Doctor, Doctor!']

because although I went with a family,
we returned separated
we each returned by ourselves to our former lives.
And, you can never really go back to a former life.

I feel like a hypocrite because I am so glad that he understands

(what does he understand? Again, if I could tell you...)

he understands, he must - he said some things that I don't think he would say otherwise.

I think he understands the conflicting frustrations and longings that eat at me,
This concept does strange things to my sense of gratitude -
as if I believed that no one else can actually listen to me when I tell the stories I carry - as if I believed that that's what I need, what they need in order to not shrivel up like a raisin.
But, I don't know whether that's a true representation, or just my mental explanation to myself.
Maybe that's just how I THINK I should feel.
And the mental knots twist again.


And I am sorry,
I am really sorry because my stories are not nearly as intense as his, and while I am encouraged that he understands me,
I wonder who understands him. Maybe there are things that I must still fit in their place, and when I have done this, I will have solved the riddle of the thing that coils inside me. Is it a parasite? A larvae? Will it consume me? Must I feed it?

Have I really felt so isolated? Have I really felt so trapped for so long?
It is difficult to say
You may not realize your traps until you come up against the bars.


I do not know the name of that which eats me


I think I am afraid that I will commit myself to a love that cannot be realized and will never recognize what I try to give to it.