for the one i'm thinking of tonight:
may your curious, wandering, brilliant spirit rest in peace.

a summary of this girl + this moment

butterflies. polynomials. the question that only you dared to ask. midnight lifechats. 1AM driving. whiteboard memories. thankfulness. Your Love. happiness. sisters (mine and yours). pumpkin pie. heartbeats. ashes for beauty. differential equations. maybes. music. apple cider. perfect autumn afternoons spent in playful conversation. don't tell me that it's never crossed your mind. the hard choices that brought me here. hazel eyes. bigger than life friendships. new friends. Sunday mornings. fleeting smiles. warm coffee cups. cinnamon sparks. Galois. safety. snuggly scarves. cats. risks. fall(ing).

The Accidental Poet

I've loved words for as long as I can remember.
However, seven-year-old me (and eleven- and fifteen-year-old me) hated poetry.

Poets were other people. Poets were beret-wearing, coffee-drinking, guitar-playing mad hatters who wandered around reciting in rhyme and iambic pentameter. (English classes did not help this stereotype.) Poets were strange people with stranger ideas who typed exclusively in lowercase. I definitely didn't want to be a poet.

You might have deduced by now that I didn't fall in love with poetry by choice.

In my senior year of high school, I took a Writer's Craft course in which we were forced to write poetry, and was surprised to find that maybe I didn't hate it (with the exception of the ballad. I still can't write those to save my life). So I found myself doing more of it—for marks initially, but eventually just for the joy of capturing everyday beauty (and pain). And slowly but surely, I found that I, too, became a writer of poems. No, not a poet. Just someone who wrote poems.

But tonight while writing my not-love-poem (it's a work in progress. The working title is "This is Not a Love Poem"), I realized that I am so in love with the art form, and it dawned on me that perhaps I have possibly, unwittingly become an accidental poet.

I've never thought of myself as a poet until tonight, but the idea no longer feels so otherly. For the first time, the name of poet feels like it could be mine.

I think I kind of love it.

for the first time in forever

                                                      "It's been so long since I have met you here; 

                                               since I have heard You speak and let You near..."

                                                                     - Starfield, "Alive in This Moment"

I can't name the moment in which everything changed. But driving home tonight, I realized that now I know the answer to the question that has been on my heart recently. 

In today's sermon and study we were asked to consider what risks God has been asking us to take in our lives; what changes we need to make that required taking that leap of faith.

This, tonight, was mine.

It has been a hell of a year. But now I know that despite all my doubts, You never left. And finally I am home, and I find that maybe home is not where I expect, but instead that I am only ever home in You. Now I know that You have brought me (us) here for all the right reasons; of this I am unmistakably certain.

So in this moment, I know that this is where I belong. 

Where You Will Find Me

Tonight, my thoughts are in a crowded room
with strangers whom I will never meet (in this universe)
Amongst a cacophony of bright chandelier lights
and conversations the darkest shade of royal blue  

Tonight, my thoughts are with the pretty eyes
that were locked on you from the very first day
I can read her mind from 3549 miles away
and I only wish that I were more wrong

Tonight, my thoughts are in a different timezone
five hours away, but seeming closer to a lifetime
Sleepy heartbeats tick with the midnight clock
You promised to never make me wait

Tonight, my thoughts are with you (of course)
spinning around in a ballroom of like minds
enchanted in a place an infinite order from home—
if you believe that home is where the heart is

Tonight, my thoughts are galaxies away in the past:
four months ago, to the time when we stood together
on the holy ground of a crowded airport tea shop and
you kissed me good-bye for another four months' time

Tonight, my thoughts are with tomorrow
Perpetually at home in the hopeful airport terminal
waiting until the day that letters, missed calls and
heartbeats align in Euclidean space and infinite time

i need a metric (space)

“If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”

                                                         - T.S. Eliot

Well, I'm about to find out for the first time. I am absolutely,
positively, most definitely in way over my head.
But I always did like a good challenge, and I can't quit now.
I guess I'll just have to learn a little faster.
We all stand a little taller on the shoulders of giants.

a million questions

i want to be the kind of girl who wears red lipstick.
i want to be the kind of girl who can do math and tell stories.
i want to be the kind of girl who wears cute socks and polka dotted tights.
i want to be the kind of girl who writes in coffee shops.
i want to be the kind of girl who drinks black coffee.
i want to be the kind of girl who plays guitar.
i want to be the kind of girl who can code.
i want to be the kind of girl who reads both great literature and yellow books.
i want to be the kind of girl who will fight to see the morning skyline.
i want to be the kind of girl who wears skirts and dresses, even in the winter.
i want to be the kind of girl who dances in storms without caring about wet hair.
i want to be a scholar of the Renaissance.
i want to be the kind of girl who believes in imperfect people doing amazing work.
i want to be the kind of girl who sees beauty in the broken and the best of humanity.
i want to be the kind of girl who loves God and life and living.
i am just a perfectly flawed girl.