14:10

Only 50 minutes more,

to 3 pm - class dismissed.

I look around at these familiar unfamiliar faces

belying what they feel and think -

I smile and look away

knowing they cannot know me

any more than I know them.

Only a few more days till I return

to a swelteringly humid little island.

Only a few more days,

but it can't come sooner.

And only far too soon before I'll be back

in another giant flea-ridden furnace.

Who really knows another's hidden landscapes? For

Each heart knows its own bitterness -

Incapacitating fears and debilitating sorrows,

private tears we never cry and never let on,

lurking in the shadows, weighing down our souls.

The little, everyday tortures we'd never dream of sharing,

we're burning in our own private little infernos.

Different ghosts haunt different corners,

different trusts I know I've broken,

different hopes misplaced in me -

another set of haunts to avoid and run away from.

Another set of demons turn me cold.

Still I try in vain.

Beneath the sweetness of smiles and

the concerted effort to turn away

the tiredness and

tightness

in my chest -

老了， 累了-

the growing apathy to

this world's concerns,

I rest on the Word

alone.

But I confess, in a hell that is both hot and cold,

the warmth of such a comfort's hard to hold.

My spirit's distance only superseded

by the distance the spiritual can seem

from my earthly fallibility.

I'd rather something more tangible, but

all the world's a stranger.

For no thing can thaw this heart,

no one else can share its joy.