I wonder which things Iâve experienced are all part of being human, and which are things that shouldnât have ever happened to me. I wonder which things I should share and which things I should put in a diary or keep in memories so abstract they never become thoughts at all.
I wonder how many memories I can hold and whether Iâll burst and at what point of growing up did so much of thinking become finding places to store what I canât speak but which I canât swallow.
When I was 8 I swallowed a loose tooth in my sleep. A story I can tell. 13 and using a flat iron on my hair at a slumber party. 17 and laughing so hard in class I got sent to stand in the hallway.
All hung out on a clothesline where the neighbors can see, drying in the soft and steady breeze of gentle retellings, of âremember that time?â
When I was 12 I noticed grown men looking at me for the first time. I was walking home in my school uniform, and I looked young for my age.
I donât know where that goes.
I bury it in a pile of dirty laundry, old blouses and a pleated skirt.
My room has always been the messiest in the house.
When I was 7 I cried so hard I threw up. I told my parents I was just sad and didnât know why.
I put that under the bed with my summer clothes that donât fit anymore.
I never learned how to sort things out,
I donât know how to choose what to keep and what to give away.
The fire when I was 16, and the 9 PM September sky glowing red, but I couldnât run the two blocks to see it, to know exactly what it looked like when my childhood evaporated into the sky like so much smoke.
I donât think I have room for that.
I donât know if I can split it up to fit into different spaces.
Sock drawers and makeup bags and backpacks and the back corner of the bottom shelf of my least-browsed bookcase.
Can someone else make space for it?
Should I tell someone? Could they help me carry it, keep it?
My friendsâ childhood bedrooms were always so clean growing up.
Maybe they have room for something of mine.
Where do they put it all?
I think everyone else mustâve learned something I missed.
Iâm only 27, and Iâm already out of space.
âa small experimental poem on unpacking and processing trauma & grief
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