A girl sits in the second row face completely concealed and shoulders crushed under the weight of something no one can see. Her complete withdrawal from everything shocking as she embodies absence. A ten minute break in the lesson. A teacher slides into the empty seat next to her leans in close whispers what is wrong. Broken detached phrases articulate a hometown destroyed, a brother missing, relatives dead, and a tear streaked face glances upwards: flooded eyes meet flooded eyes. A teacher's hand rests on an absent girls back and words disappear and a heart crashes to the floor to join the other.
A slow dragging of one foot before another across the school yard after class. A student stumbles behind words spew forth she is like my sister but sad like this for many days I told her don't be like this never cry... A teacher stops mid-stride, turns pauses corrects If you were really her brother your heart would be like hers, you would be the same as her, not tell her this wrong thing... A student stunned. A breeze blows an empty bag across the ground. I told her say om mane padme hum then she is okay. A teacher stares in anger deep into the eyes of the student, rolls her own, turns away from such nonsense. The walk continues the chat continues. The teacher stops one last time Listen. Anything, anything I can do I want to do... you tell her also, and as for you if you have some hurt you tell me. You are my students and you are not alone. And deep dark Tibetan eyes blink back a watery ocean.
See I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
I'm living in the wasteland... I just didn't realize that the streams were going to be tears.
