What I Packed Before Leaving the World

A photograph of no one, taken in golden light.

(It still smells like warm dust and maybe laughter.)

Three apologies I never sent, wrapped in silence and thin regret.

One is sealed shut. One is smudged with ink. One is still waiting.

My grandmother’s sigh, the one she made when she thought no one heard.

I folded it into a scarf.

A jar of sea sounds:

waves retreating, a bell buoy far away, the echo of something vast.

The last message I wrote but didn’t send.

“It’s okay,” it begins. But I don’t remember to whom.

A single shoelace from the sneakers I wore when I ran without knowing where.

(They always took me somewhere.)

The word “maybe”

scribbled on the back of a receipt.

A shard of mirror,

just enough to remind me I had a face once.

And eyes that wanted.

The voice of the child I once was,

humming nonsense in the dark.

I promised not to forget her.

A list of things I loved but couldn’t keep:

summer thunderstorms, strangers who smiled, quiet libraries,

the scent of rain on pavement, the moon when it felt close.

A feather.

I don’t remember why.

A heartbeat, slightly cracked.

The sound of someone whispering my name like it mattered.

I keep it in a box too fragile to open.

My favorite question: What if?

Folded into a paper crane. It flutters sometimes.

A dried dandelion wish —

the only one that stayed intact.

I never said it aloud.

A train ticket to a city I never visited.

The date is smeared, but I think it was meant for tomorrow.

One perfect second of being understood.

Pressed between the pages of a worn-out novel.

The smell of my first heartbreak.

(Like cedarwood and static.)

A cup of tea I never got to finish.

Cold now, but steeped in good intention.

The echo of a conversation that saved me.

I replay it when the silence gets too heavy.

A scrap of sky from the day I almost felt infinite.

Pale blue, slightly frayed at the edges.

A memory I’m afraid I invented.

But it holds me gently, so I let it stay.

A promise I made to myself and almost kept.

It glows a little in the dark.

The last dream I had before I stopped dreaming.

It smelled like cinnamon and wet earth.

A thread from the sweater someone once held me in.

It still knows the shape of comfort.

A name I never learned to say without trembling.

I folded it into a leaf and let it dry.

A scream I never let out.

Quiet as a storm behind glass.

A lullaby I made up in the dark, just for myself.

It still hums when the world forgets me.

The glow of a window I watched from across the street.

Someone inside was dancing. I imagined they were free.

The ache of every almost.

Tucked neatly in a matchbox, too hot to touch.

A sunrise I caught in the corner of my eye.

Proof that the world didn’t stop, even when I did.

The silence that came after I finally said what I meant.

It was louder than I expected.

The question that never found its answer.

Still turning slowly in my palm like a small stone.

One final glance backward.

Just enough to know I was here.