Traveler in a Suitcase!

Once broken, I tried to mend them.
Carried them into new rooms,
set them down where the light was kinder,
and dressed them in small ornaments.

as though beauty might hide the cracks.

But pieces remain pieces.
They never return to their first shape.
If you look too long, the seams betray themselves.

Still, they are something.
Not nothing.

I used to wish people were the same.
Whole again, once repaired.
But imperfections are louder than silence.

They dull the surface.
They drown the hidden perfections.

So I keep them away.

Hidden in corners, where ordinary eyes will not reach.
Kept for the rare passerby who does not mistake flaw for failure.

Who sees not the fracture,
but the pattern it creates.

Perhaps one day,
someone will arrive
and notice,

that perfection was never lost.
Only rearranged.

You gave me a world,

and I moved in.

You handed me rainbows,

as if color could promise forever.

Time flew.

The living obligation beside me

ground it down.

The rainbows don’t come anymore.

Your world dimmed.

I sat inside your presence like a locked room.

You built another world,

I understood it wasn’t mine.

Everything looked bright from far away.

Up close, my sky went dark.

There were doors, yes,

but none that opened for me.

I can’t move.

The light has turned to weight.

I keep imagining the ending,

and it keeps imagining me.

Time flew.

The living obligation beside me

ground it down.

The rainbows don’t come anymore.

Your world withered.

Nothing returned to me.

I think about standing,

but I can’t feel my legs.

You handed me a world,

and it began to hum.

An untitled song set up camp

behind my eyes.

It did not teach me to breathe,

it counted the seconds for me.

I rewound the tape, slowly,

thinking reason would appear in the hiss.

If I find the start, I told myself,

the middle will settle.

Fix it, will I?

Take it to a shop?

Replace the parts?

Or pass it on and call that wisdom?

I could record over it,

give the track a cleaner name,

sand the edges till it shines.

But do I want new,

or do I want quiet?

I don’t need it, I know.

So I ask you politely at first,

this song in my head,

won’t you stop singing?

It doesn’t.

It grows.

I offer bargains, ruins, the softest parts of me.

The volume learns my house.

And then the floor forgets my footsteps.

The hallway keeps its air.

Only the chorus moves,

and it is not mine.

You handed me a world.

It had windows that wouldn’t open,

light that behaved.

I learned the weather by observation,

not faith.

No guarantees. No clauses.

I struck the match.

I know that

The house brightened once,

then remembered it was ash.

Since then my mind keeps searching for you

the way a lighthouse wastes itself,

methodical, exact,

while you chase rainbows that promise

continuations, not returns.

You will not come back

unless I set a fire in your backyard,

and even then the heat would be

recognition, not mercy.

I wish you happiness.

You blew me off like dust from a book

you’d already decided not to read.

When joy fits you again,

you’ll see me, briefly,

in a red dress, correctly lit.

Not an apology. A proof.

My mind keeps its midnight.

Yours has been laundered, starched,

put away on the correct shelf.

If you looked back,

you’d learn how dark “home” can be

when the lights behave too well.

Maybe you were cursed.

Curses are simply contracts with fancy fonts.

They lapse. They always do.

The spell breaks, I suspect,

the moment I watch you suffer

and do not intervene.

Again: I wish you happiness.

Again: you brushed me off.

Again: when you are finally happy,

you’ll find me.

polite, exact,

in that red dress,

not waiting, only finished.