In my dreams,
I am always packing.
Suitcases lined up like soldiers,
zippered mouths straining
with clothes I’ll never wear
to places I never quite reach.

I set out,
but the road splinters into side streets,
detours,
barriers that flash like neon reminders:
“Not today.”
And so I stumble off-ramp
after off-ramp,
carrying too much,
getting nowhere.

The ghosts wait for me.
Not the spooky sheeted kind,
but the ones I knew,
the ones I loved,
the ones who whisper,
“You’re still here,
but what are you doing with it?”

They’re alive in my dreams,
stubbornly so
sometimes they block the path,
sometimes they just sigh at me,
their presence
a half-guilt, half-love tether.
I wake up with the weight of their eyes
still on me.

In waking life, it’s the same story.
My bags are packed
ambition, duty, hope, exhaustion,
all crammed in together.
And yet I’m stalled.
Life throws paperwork instead of plane tickets,
crises instead of confirmations.
The journey is written somewhere,
but the script keeps getting edited,
pages torn out,
lines crossed.

I joke sometimes
that maybe I’m the world’s most inefficient traveler
forever TSA-prechecked,
yet perpetually grounded.
But the humor only half-covers the ache.

Because the truth is,
I want to arrive.
I want to unpack.
I want the ghosts to nod in approval,
to tell me it’s okay
that progress is crooked,
that perfection is an illusion,
that stumbling forward
is still, in its own way,
movement.

Until then,
I’ll keep folding,
zipping,
rearranging.
Suitcases full of dreams,
ghosts tagging along,
me searching for the terminal
where departure finally
meets destination.