It’s been well over a week, but this June finds me settling into our new home at the corners of Alexandria city. This means a whole lotta less commuting from school to home.

There’s so much left to unpack, mostly because we don’t have much furniture. My books, those, have already made themselves cozy.  When I was ordering my books into neat piles, I came across one that was my summer reading when I was in high school:

The image of someone playing music around the “dead and dying” has never really left me. Last night, I found my favorite clip from the movie, Voces Inocentes, a film based on children-turned-soldiers during the 12 year civil war of El Salvador:

How sad

the rain sounds

on the cardboard rooftops

how sad live my people in cardboard houses

children the color of my earth

with its same scars,

millionaires of worms

look, how much suffering…

…

It’s the beauty and weight of hope that haunts me. Some people carry it through music. I carry it through poetry. Yet, I think everyone must carry it within.

It’s the only way to survive—second nature maybe.

…

I leave you with some images for this week: