Ode to Nicaragua

Here is the beginning of my ode to Nicaragua and the time spent here--for I am entering into the last days...


...I will look back and lament the loss of these nights. Like when you wish you could just hold on to things and preserve some kind of feeling that would outlast it all. I can feel something that's about to expire, and I'm anxious. My head hurts and my heart even randomly skips a beat. I don't know that I've experienced this sort of angst before...I believe it's the counted-ness of days, the planning for departure, the sighs that go along with a goodbye, and the strange emotions of feeling in between, not really fitting distinctly anywhere. Im trying to grasp in my heart what this all was and has been. Yet, my mind is already trying to walk away, for in this moment, i am thinking about what i will lose.

I will miss the nights where I could walk outside my little room at 3am when everything and everyone was silent and look up and see stars, moon, and feel quiet inside, except for the far off sound of a lone rooster crowing for a new daylight. I will miss oatmeal and milk at nighttime with spoons upon spoons of raw sugar--it made me feel like a child again. I will miss my head being scratched every night while listening to bob marley with my hermano. I will miss the sound of my fan spinning against iron and shaking like a generator as I fell asleep. I will miss praying with my madre, listening to the reverence in her voice and letting my tears fall freely. I will miss her small, dark hands that held mine when she wanted to tell me something important. I will miss the smell of rain and dirt and the sounds on my tin roof. I will miss making apple tea and wearing a mint julep masque while doing so. I will miss not giving a shit about what I was wearing or what I looked like. I will miss walking everywhere with my oversized backpack and somehow, feeling entirely unbound. I will miss flailing in a freezing cold shower to warm myself up. I will miss juicy fruit on the streets and cold coke in a bag and tired feet at night and desperate prayers at midday and ziplock bags of coins and windy taxi rides and aimless walks and the sheer discomfort that comes with living in a place where people don't have everything.

I have found the secret to being content, and it does not lie in exteriors, and it is not found in people. It is in all goodness, beauty, love, patience, peace, joy, gratitude, courage, and truth. It is the Spirit sprinkled over all things if we could but just catch a glimpse of that sort of glory.

The secret is.



God.