The past two months were hard. Matt did not have a job, school and life were up in the air, and the move to Boise was at a stand still. Every day was boring and stressful. I am glad that is all behind us... we are now here in Boise, Matt is getting school and ROTC in order, and job interviews are being lined up. I feel like we are living again. Not to mention the weather is a lot warmer here allowing us to be outside!
This said the poem below seems very appropriate.
Making a Fist
by Naomi Shihab Nye
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon spilt wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders me must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
To here Nye read this poem herself, click
HERE.
