Baggage

Do you still wake up in the night

and start listing what you’d take

if you had to leave

all over again

and start again?

The refugee rule:

one suitcase per single person,

two per family.

Will it be your notebooks,

the photos?

Which of your favourite shoes?

The good winter coat, surely.

Perhaps one of the Persian carpets

– then nothing else at all.

What would you rescue?

Does it still wake you,

the contradiction between your siege

mentality hoarding everything

against sudden shortages,

and the refugee sense

that you can only truly own

one suitcase full of stuff.

The rest is contingent.

It isn’t really yours.

The rest will have to be left behind.