Baggage is a journey poem, thoughts on holding on and letting go and the ability to do so. And another thing. Not all baggage is bad.
Baggage – a Journey Poem
Her right leg is always playing catch-up with her left, on the rope
wound around it, a bunch of spoons, once-yellow rubber ducks, a
handful of cells, and grandma's old bracelet is getting a scratching
from the pebbles on the road. The rope's twines are cutting down to
her ankle, sometimes she twists her foot to keep the fibres out of
the cut.
She's known to bring traffic to a stand-still when ten minutes crawl
during her crossing and you can measure city stress-levels in toots.
Upgrading is always a problem, how do you bring all your friends
across and do you sign up for a new identity and can you remember all
your passwords, hers fell into her lamb stew. When she opened it, she
found carrot shavings and burnt onion sitting on the battery.
Last weekend, she went to a tie-cutting workshop to see about ditching
some people. Not grandma, no, she's good even though the bracelet is
now trailing too. That is the trouble with the power of now. When is
now or where is it, someone tell me, please. Now, the rubber
ducks that gifted her many squeals, are on the rope getting a
thumping from the wooden spoon she loved licking salty
dough off. Also in the relegation zone, silver spoons, the china turned
to dust long ago. The road does that. Even when trying to toad-hop it
from moss patch to leaf-pile like to one she's hiding in this instant
looking for moths to nibble the knots down to nothing. Just
visualise, Molly said, so now she's running through a meadow.
The skies are blue.
I love it when people are real, vulnerable and embrace their frailties and brokenness. Every human has baggage. We have to deal with it and that is the only way to move forward. Bravo for a well-written piece.