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Friday, September 05, 2014

Unpacking

Photo from Sankarshansen's Wikimedia page.

It’s a return trip, so the bag’s full of dirty
laundry, and tchotchkes, and one layer entirely
uncertain: an origami of jotted notes, dog-eared
leaves torn from a local rag, a drying pomegranate
flower on a sprig I plucked before I flew home.

Like an old vaudeville joke, the space inside the case
is larger than it seems from the outside. It also doesn’t
smell like socks now—there’s a moment when I turn,
and the room fills with a faint smell of fresh-cut grass.

I’m thinking about beacons: web beacons, those tiny
whisperers that hop our trains of thought as we roam
from site to site, and harbor buoys, a very different
sort of beacon, when my fingers find I’d missed a
pocket. Inside it, a contract: a few months’ more light.

3 comments:

Dale said...

I've been back to read this four or five times, each time with more admiration.

Lori Witzel said...

:-)

Glad to hear it's got a little lasting power...when I post these things, it's often in a white-hot rush of completion momentum, and I can't tell exactly how it's gone. Too close to one's own writing, I guess.

Dale said...

Oh, yes, on occasion I'm appalled by things I've posted. But for me it's necessary. They won't set if they're not out there.

This one, though, feels perfect to me.