Flight to my Inner Child

darling i have been made aware,
despair no longer, let your heart
disoriented in flutters,     confide in me.

the flights were desperate,
each piece of luggage put on the scale
meticulously a million times over; our lives
folded into 23kg and a carry on bag,
over the years i reckon
landfills with the size of me scattered throughout.

heartache on poems by rotting apples
mindless doodles crumpled beneath plastic bags,
my childhood gameboy scarlet scratched
somewhere across the world.

i would shed as much of myself as i could,
each move getting easier in time,
the vanishing possessions lightening the bagpacks.

i still go back and forth, condemn and condone
my mother's absolutist practice, cleaning slates,
never treating the physical as holy. i suppose
it made room for better things
just as it left little room for memories
in tangible souvenirs.

now i resign to specific items, easy to pack and collect,
among my most precious remain:
3 caravaggio posters from tokyo,
colour pencils along with a poetry diary,
and ocean vuong. oh, and postcards too,

Flight to my Inner Child

yes, much like pillows, they cushion every empty
space inside my bagpacks
along my walls, across my desk.

i give them away as often as i get them,
for birthdays and reunions, i give the memory away
and remember life as a circle game

by joni mitchell and the feeling of suspense
of wheels taking off the tarmac into the sky,

the power of now like a religion, the heart the only sure home.