a little about the place that changed my life

so imma give all i got before i die

Jamaica 10

My heart can barely feel

my lungs have trouble expanding

and the blood flowing through my veins

is thinning.

I feel as though I don’t know what I should be doing anymore. Everything around me is the same, everything is working properly. Well, I don’t know if ‘properly’ is the correct word. While Paul Reid has his little hands bound with a seemingly endless roll of medical tape we protest because it stings a little when a bandaid is torn off… no, ‘properly’ is not the right word.

The world keeps turning when it should have stopped. Why don’t people know? It’s as if they can’t hear Teesha’s screams as she cried for her mother at Bustamante. As if they can’t see the Lazaro Elongator digging pins into her leg so that her bones will even out. The apathy we encountered with the nurses at Bustamante, the nurses that didn’t respond to a child’s outstretched hands, that didn’t even blink when the burn victim’s piercing screams filled that opened and airy hospital, seems to have carried on over here.

My vision has clouded over

and all I see are long eyelashes,

and haunting brown eyes.

“Why are their eyelashes so long?” I asked Dr. B. It seems like I asked her so many things during this trip. “Because they’re taking seizure medicine” was the reply. What beautiful eyes stared up at me as I changed diapers, struggled with bottles and lotioned little bodies. Desroy would get so drawn into my face that he would stare and stare and smile and smile and forget to eat. My little Ian Chung would smile every time I walked by, wondering if I was going to stop this time to play with him. And I would every time. Because to ignore those eyes… is to ignore God.

Time has given

and time has taken away.

And all that joy and sorrow

Is etched upon a face.

A picture I have in my heart is a hand etched with time on mine. I’m so young and inexperienced, ridiculously naïve. But my grandmothers and grandfathers at Momma T’s, they give me the need to live, the need to feel the joy and love, the sorrow and pain that life provides. They have shown me that humility is a lifelong endeavor, we just need it sometimes a little more.

I have a lot more to say, but I’m still working it out and writing it out.

For me.

I’ll never finish.

It’s a lifelong pursuit.