october 4, 2009.

earlier my thoughts so clear.
so full of flow, and reason.
and now i'm struggling, to remember.
to rhyme.

it truly is as if a part of me is gone.
missing.
it's so hard to explain, and even to understand.
these years have flown by, somehow. but now it's hitting me.
the length of time.
the distance.
the emptiness, i feel.

and then there's ghana. a miss i can't even begin to verbalize.
even though there's time there, too, it's still there.
i am still there.
my mind, my soul.
i'm still struggling to grasp this change, that i feel.
this profound sense that i have seen a world, unlike my own. that i have lived and breathed something, so special, so real, and that i must be changed.
but they've all stopped asking. no one brings it up, anymore.
it's in the past, for them. but it is so so present, in me.

and my friends. my family. those beautiful little kids. i can hardly speak to them, or about them, without feeling the urge to cry.
because what we went through, together, was life-rattling. life-shifting.
we changed, together.
we grew, together.
we are forever connected through our months in africa together.

and i want someone to notice. to see my heart, broken for those kids. filled with love for those people, and that beautiful continent. and overflowing with sadness because it's all so far away.
but no one does. and i can't show anyone, anyway. it's too deep inside me to root up, and put on display, for just any passerby to see.

it's personal and private and passionately mine, and yet i want someone, to notice.