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Elizabeth Apr 2019
Sometimes I feel like the wrinkled laundry that no one cares to fold or even dares to walk past in worry they may feel pressured to just get the job done. I feel as though I am something you may avoid reading too deeply into for you will get caught in the waterfall of my tears and be ****** slowly beneath the raging waters of hope but self doubt. The paper bag blowing in  the wind could be seen as more important than I for some times they don’t even hear my footsteps or see my shadow lurking through the dark hallways to meet the fridge, rather lonely from my days of not eating, but it greets me anyway, happy to see I’ve picked up a grape and smoothed it’s skin over my teeth and bitten into it hard but softly because it’s only a grape.   But she’s only a girl, she’s only a girl with a journal and a poetry book don’t worry much. I hear them talk about me and whisper through walls empty because my childhood photos are gone for I don’t want to remember the past me. I can hear them clenching their jaws as the sound of my weeping fills the shallows of the  home.  I can feel their worry about the  paper bag in the wind and the crumpled flower on my windowsill.
They worry about me but I just don’t care
Igor Goldkind Mar 2019
Paper Bag

I am a paper bag, I am.
I’m not the smart one,
I’m not the successful one
I’m not the tall one who always won and 
Then died. 
I am a paper bag.
I’m only as good as what I can carry.

I am a paper bag, 
I’m not plastic, not I.
I am paper: rough, brown and thin
I’m not waterproof, you know.
And I can’t hold any liquids or gases within.
I only have room for the stuff that matters.
I’m a paper bag.
I’m only as good as what I can carry.

I am a paper bag.
Wrinkled and used and often abused
Thrown on the floor.
Buried deep inside your drawers.
I am a paper bag. 
That sometimes falls apart
I’m only as good as what I can carry.

©IgorGoldkind 2018
First published on the cover of the San Diego Free Press for Poetry Month, 2018

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