The Things I Carry
I carry the shallow weight of my own regrets.
I carry the guilt of my mother who felt she could’ve done more for my grandmother.
Nights spent, teary-eyed phone calls to the nursing home.
I carry the comprehension of my father.
Hundreds of times he’s defeated me at chess/at card games.
I am his knowledge.
I carry sorrow from soccer games lost and triumph from games won with the stench of wet grass and caked on mud still fresh in my memory.
I carry the weight of high school, the pressure to get into college, the weight of rumors and the regret of not paying attention in class.
Feeling hopeless and defeated when I fail a test, though I remember I can carry the power of success.
I carry the daily jeers and spite of my peers and my teachers.
I carry the burden of my mother’s size eight firmly up my ass when I don’t do what I’m told.
I carry three-day weekends and the joy of a snow day.
I carry my blood, my veins, my organs.
I carry my bones, my cartilage, my flesh and my hair.
I carry my beating heart and the sound it makes letting everyone around me and myself to know that I’m still very much alive.
I carry the ability of perfect hindsight vision, the ability of blind foresight.
I carry my friends, the pressure of their own burdens.
I own the ability to make them smile, the ability to cheer them up when I don’t know how to help myself.
I’ve carried some of them for as long as I can remember; some I can’t carry anymore, and some I’ve just started to carry.
I carry love and passion; I carry hate and abhor.
I carry confusion, delirium, nostalgia of days past.
I carry insomnia and sleepless nights dreaming up at my ceiling of life to come.
I carry my dreams, both physical and mental.
I carry what I aspire to be.
I carry photography, a story of my life through pictures, through captivity, through still frame.
I carry my wishes.
I carry the beach, the waves that crash down onto the shore and onto me and the salty residue that lands on my flesh and hair from staying out too long.
I carry stupidity, I carry charm and I carry luck.
I carry the regret of anonymity and the fear of being alone.
We all carry that; no one wants to.
