Baggage

I’m part of a generative email thread entitled Poetry Friday that invites each of us to write and share a poem based on a shared prompt. Most weeks, I tell myself I’m too busy and don’t participate.

Some weeks, the Poetry Friday prompt winds its way into my subconscious, where it toddles around until it makes itself known. All day today it’s been reaching its chubby hands skyward to get my attention. “Up! Up!” it insists. 

What I need to be writing is a slice of life, but this seed of a poem has attached itself to my leg and is threatening to climb. 

I’m aware of it in the way a driver is aware of a car in its blind spot, hanging back just waiting to interfere in some highly unproductive way. I can speed up or slow down, but that car is determined to camp out there, daring me to forget about it. 

Sigh. 

I check my mirrors and wonder if I might two-birds-one-stone-it. 

Technically, this preoccupation is a slice of my life, right? 

Baggage

The task
of packing
e     x     p     a     n     d     s
to fill the time.

All night?
Alright. 

A simple list 
of outfits
matched to days—
the way packing should go—
is impossible!
(Apparently.)

Too many decisions,
meant to be 
s     p     r     e     a     d
across days—
manageable
in
small
doses—
demand to be made
in minutes. 

It is too much. 

I fold and stack.
Re-stack.
Reconsider. 

All wrong.
Too much.
Not enough.
You don't wear that when you're home!
What are you thinking?

After hours. . . 

I’m down to minutes,
and now
it’s just throwing
in anything
and everything,
because maybe?

And, what if?