By Izabella K. North
The boxes and bags are finally still –
The ones that carried my life here,
From one fragile estate to the next.
The tracks ran north,
and I too took that train –
I watched.
While the cows grazed amongst the grass
and the lambs found their shade under the shelter of a tree,
Time passed me by, and
I remembered just how loved I had been.
The home I spent the peak of my youth in,
shedding my skin…
And the streets I traced – where my mind comes to wander
at the dying of the day.
The nights we were wasted, and the trains we all caught –
Our drunken confessions and hangovers the next day.
The drives that turned into escapism, going places we don’t know.
Two summers with the girls
who taught me what it was like to live,
and love again.
My teenage years – so showered with love,
I used to ponder its worth.
For I recalled
every memory that ever made me hurt.
For three years I moved in a box of my own –
Like a package in transit,
flying city to city
and driving from road to road.
I slept in room to borrowed room –
Succumbing to every weathered storm and bend in the tracks.
Some suggested that I shared the impulsivity of the weather,
as I wondered where it is I might finally call home.
But tonight, the boxes and bags are finally still,
and I am surrounded by old versions of me –
A girl who fought fire for this day,
and one who wondered what it would mean to stay.
But it is me who holds the key to every era of my dreams.
The storm, it still brews –
Moving closer and nearer, than farther.
