The Suitcase

I’m packing my new suitcase. It’s pretty cool.  It’s black and orange and has lots of zippers and compartments to stick stuff in. It’s even got an extended handle and wheels. It’s perfect for cramming last minute trinkets and trash that I will find and bring home to The Monkey.  I’m pretty happy with my new suitcase.

My suitcase sits empty on my bed. As always, it’s a formidable task to decide what exactly to take.  For the organizing, folding, sorting mayhem, I unleash my type A-OCD; She loves this stuff.  She springs joyfully around the bedroom, yelling:  “OKAY!  Here’s the plan!  First!  We lay out all the outfits, with shoes and shirts and pants and belts and underwear and socks.  Once we’ve done that, then, OH THEN!  We get to organize and pack all the clothes by type!  Underwear together, then pants, and shirts... OH my goodness, don’t forget power cords!  Must not forget those.  This. Is. So. Much. Fun.  

I sit starting at my now packed suitcase.  I wait.  There is no sense in gnashing the steel teeth together just yet.  There is still more to find it’s way inside.  It always does.  I never go anywhere without it.

‘When the student is ready’ I whisper to myself.

Then, it arrives.  Silently, it glides inches above the floor. A black shadow. Cold, putrid, rancid.  It smells like stale cigarettes and 3 day unwashed hair. This faceless shadow furtively crosses the floor, ascends my bed and hovers above the suitcase. I look at it, watch it, again trying to figure out where it begins and where it ends.  I can’t see through it and the one time I tried to touch it, it enveloped my wrist so tightly my hand went cold and numb.  

‘When the student is ready...’ I whisper to myself.  

The shadow pours into the suitcase, spilling itself over all my neatly folded and sorted clothes.  It oozes onto every fibre, every nook of both content and container.  It makes itself comfortable and nestles in for yet another journey.

‘When the student is ready...’ I sigh, close the suitcase and methodically guide the zipper slowly around the parameter of my rectangular baggage.  

There are 192 hours in my journey.  3864.82 kilometres travelled.  An ascension of 4540 feet from sea level.  I take this journey to marry pen to paper.  

‘When the student is ready,‘  I announce to myself.  

The Pen moves effortlessly across the paper, spilling out words like blood splatter at a crime scene.  Painful words, words never spoken, written, considered.  They don’t make sense.  They are ugly, raw, imperfect words.  I don’t want to read them again.  Obviously, these words don’t belong to me...they cannot be mine.  

Can they?  

Let the pen go. Write the story.

As I run, I hear a faint whispering in the trees; ‘the Teacher appears.’

The Pen continues to glide, day and night.  I can hear the words now. I feel them. They weave a story.  My story.  

Questions are swept away silently with the fog.   

I sit starting at my now packed suitcase.  

I wait. 

I close my eyes.  

I breathe in. 

I wait.

I smile.