Snow White

I love the feeling of fresh snow,
the stillness of huge flakes falling
it's almost audible,
the plonk
and before my eyes
the dark road
turns white
until a car passes
and leaves a blemish behind
two tracks leading
who-knows-where.

"I'm going out to buy a sled,"
I hear a passerby declare.
And everywhere
where there's even just
a slight slant of a hill
children traipse uphill
and giggle their way down.

Winter has come
at last.

At a party for a friend
I meet a fellow blogger.
We had never met,
but for the past year
I have followed
his family's journey
after loosing a baby.

"You are a gifted writer,"
I tell him.

"It's strange," he says,
"how people who don't know me
think they know me
because they've read my blog."

I know.
It's strange.
I don't know what to make of it
this tool that invites people in
even when you don't necessarily
want them in your world.

Sounds harsh?
Perhaps that's why I've written so little lately.
I'm not ready to let everyone in.
I'm not ready to share
why being home is healing
why being away from Kenya is hard
and why I cannot go back just yet
but at the same time
am dying to be back there
surrounded by the children,
"my" children.

Putting all of that out here
is almost like a ruining the fresh white of the snow.
It's different when a kids slides down the hill, giggling
than when a car cuts a path through the snow.

Make sense?
Not sure.
Not everything makes sense right now.
It's just the way it is.