luggage

Luggage like history, like stories you carried
that said something about the places you were willing
and unwilling to go.
Luggage like roadmaps, like stop signs.
Luggage like loss, like yearning.
Luggage like weather, the sky a continuous unfolding
into gray and storm, wind that would uproot trees,
leave the fields flattened.
Luggage like the home you never bought,
the ring you never wore, the child
you never had. Luggage like the missed foul shot
and the final game of the season.
Luggage like an empty tank, and you driving on regardless.
Luggage like the wounds you were dealt by love,
unsuspecting as you lay yourself bare for more.
Luggage like broken. Luggage like dead.
Luggage like a tumor lodged in the middle of a spine
that insisted on bending through the pain.
Luggage like family, like lack of family,
like too much and not enough.
Luggage like bad directions and threadbare and absent.
Here’s what I am carrying, what you are carrying
despite ourselves, despite everything we want to forget.
And yet the moment I come to you with all that rawness and wrong,
I know nothing will keep you from seeing what I hope
and have always hoped to be seen.
The simple fact of this body reaching out, just wanting
to be held.