Mini Poem #13 - Boxes and Bags
This week's poem is an old one I uploaded onto a platform which has recently decided to shutdown but feels fitting as to how I've been feeling lately.
Boxes and Bags
As long as I can
remember
Some aspect of my life
Has been tucked,
Packed or stored
away
Inside a box or bag
At first, it wasn’t up to
me
A decision made on
my behalf
To live most my
childhood
Between two different
family lives
In my early twenties, it was all the rage
To pack up the things you liked
And set off for university
To live the
student
life
Even after graduating
Many continue to move
And settle in a different place
In search of postgraduate post-graduate work
At this point, 16 years have passed
For me, living out a bag
It started unintentionally
But it’s now part of
who I am
Even now in my thirties I
haven’t unpacked
My things haven’t been
together as one
For almost twenty-five years
That’s two decades and a half
After all this
time moving
round
I question
my ability to
stop
Open up all
those boxes
And unpack
for an
indefinite
amount of
time
What
happens if I’ve
forgot
How it feels to do this
That somehow when I try I’m
not sure
How you manage life like that...
Although I sit and
ponder A life still,
staying and in
one home
I’ve not had the
opportunity
Since life
has had
other
plans
Choices
I’ve made and
dreams I strived for
Or just quite simply
that I can
Leave me and my
life
Still, compart
mental
ised
into
boxes
and
bags.This poem was written 5 years ago, I’d been uploading a few poems to a platform (the name is completely escaping me right now) and I asked my sister for inspiration for my next poem. She suggested I write about moving and this is what came up.
Recently the owners of the platform have decided to close it down, sending a link to download the poems I had with them. Poems I’d forgotten about! It was a nice reminder to get them up on here!
The formatting is different as on that platform, you could play around with backgrounds and images, separating the poem into different pages. When I came to edit it today I thought I’d bring it back to a more formal style, and then decided to leave it. Perhaps its disorganised style represents my scattered belongings.
Today, as I took out my calculator to work out how many years it’s been now, it made my jaw drop. 18 years. At 18 years old I left my family home, I’ve spent half of my life with belongings scattered around and struggling to settle down.
It has been 30 years since my parents divorced. I have not had my belongings in one space since. 30 years and they still can’t get on, but that’s a story we don’t need to get into today.
I’m a fan of numbers, as you might have read in my biggest fear, I find meaning in them and they give me a sense of alignment. Do you feel connected to numbers in any way?
This year I’m making, what my best friend is calling, a pilgrimage back to the UK by car from my sunny home in the south of Spain. Where I plan to open up those boxes and bags to bring together my possessions from between my parents’ houses.
This year it somehow felt right, these numbers are comforting me that the moment is now.
I still struggle to settle, albeit I’m now 4 years in one town (I’m approaching a record) and in summer two years since I bought a house. I woke up last night with this overwhelming feeling of not being happy in the place I’ve chosen to put down roots, I’m happy with the house and the person I share it with. But my mind flutters between different places I’ve loved living in, for different reasons, and this yearning for aspects where I am doesn’t have.
I find this careful balance of all the elements in enjoying the place where to plant myself hard. As I said in my introduction, I think I’ve got travelling blood in me. I’m also an Aquarian and feel I’ve too much water in my sign, I’m in a constant flow, which makes it difficult to just stay.
As my partner and I sit at the crossroads post-infertility, this river of movement is pushing me to move on. But a part of me is begging me to hold on to the roots and stay, is it possible to somehow manage a compromise between the two? Could I be like the salmon that can both swim with and against the stream?
I’ve always felt a slosh between different parts of my personality, the desire to settle and the dream to move on creates the most turmoil.
Do you struggle with the want to stay put but also the drive to be on the move? What do you do to manage these conflicting feelings? I would love to connect with you in the comments.
This is the thirteenth poem in a series, if you’d like to read the others follow these links:
Mini Poem #1 - Unexpected Grief
Mini Poem #4 - It Is Not Only You My Dear
Mini Poem #5 - Accumulated Petals
Mini Poem #7 - Ilde in Udon
Mini Poem #8 - On My Balcony
Mini Poem #9 - Summer Bliss
Mini Poem #10 - Painful Dreams
Mini Poem #12 - Hope is a Dangerous Thing
I totally understand this (and I LOVED the poem and its layout by the way)! I've been living barebones for a while now for this exact reason but the sentimental need to hold on to trinkets and pieces of art made by friends is catching up with me. I'm craving a place to call my own, put all my stuff in, and then leave again to explore - but with the knowledge that there is a place in the world that is wholly mine.