TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above th

Jacked It From Mairead (Y)

I _______ Jack
Jack is ________.
Jack thinks a lot about _______.
When I think of Jack, I think of ________.
I want Jack to ________ me.
If I were alone in a room with Jack I would _______.
I think Jack should _____.
Jack needs ______.
I want to ____________ Jack.
If I could describe Jack in a word: ______
Jack will never ______ .
Jack can ______ my _______.
I hope Jack never _____.
I _____ Jack because _______.
Jack makes me ________.
Jack should _______.
If I saw Jack now I'd __________.
I would build a _______ just for Jack

1) The GAA player who played in front of 80,000 at the weekend will be teaching your children, selling you meat or fixing your drains on Monday morning. The soccer player who plays in front of 80,000 will be moaning about playing too many games and will be trying to sell you his personalised brand of leisure wear

2) GAA nicknames are better. Soccer players just add a Y to their surnames

3) Dublin vs Meath is a real derby. What does Utd. Vs City mean to Ronaldo or Sibierski

4) How many soccer players does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer eleven. One to stick it in and ten to surround and kiss him after he does it

5) Soccer players go to the papers after a game. GAA players go to the pub.

6) John Terry would run a mile if he came up against Diarmiud O'Sullivan.

7) GAA teams are numbered 1-15. A soccer team reads like the lottery results

All soccer players wear shin pads. Some hurlers wear helmets

9) Television runs soccer. Schoolteachers run the GAA

10) The GAA is about where you're from. Soccer is about who you like

11) No segregation at GAA games

12) No soccer team has a nickname quite as lovely as the Fighting Cocks of Carlow

13) Bubble perms never made it to Croke Park

14) A scoreless draw in the GAA would be quite a novelty

15) The GAA may not appreciate its women as much as it should but at least we all know who Cora Stanunton is. The most famous woman in English soccer is Posh Spice

16) Under age players get to be part of the biggest days in hurling and football at half-time in the All-Ireland.

17) Micheal O'Murchearaigh.

1 If a GAA player ever jumped at a spectator like Eric Cantona did the rest of his team would join in. So would the rest of the crowd.

19)Vinnie Jones grabbed Gascoignes testicles. Paudie O'Se decked Joe McNally during the National Anthem. McNally learnt his lesson. Gascoigne just got worse.

20) The GAA season always leaves you wanting more. The soccer season leaves soccer people demanding less. "Fewer games please"

21) Old soccer players get testimonials, Old GAA players just slip down to junior.

22) Rural villages = A Church, A Post-office, a Pub and a GAA pitch.

23) Pints after the match with the lad you knocked seven lumps of shite out of in the game.

24)Croke park on a Summer's Day.

25)Roman Abramovich can buy the League. You can't buy Sam.

26)GAA goalposts cast nicer shadows than soccer posts.

27)There is no better sports equipment than a nicely crafted hurley