Goblin Girl

It’s been a minute since I’ve published Poetry on this blog so perhaps it’s time. In fact, maybe even overdue! So here’s a quick poem I wrote called Goblin Girl.

I think I have always been a goblin.

Not the sort that lives beneath bridges,
though I suppose I have collected enough strange little things
to qualify.

I mean the kind with bright eyes
and a sack over her shoulder,
always looking down the road
for the next glint.

A house, perhaps.

A good one.
With a little room for books
and a kitchen where I can make pasta
so much pasta

As a kid, I thought how nice it must be as an adult

to have as much pasta as you wanted, with noodles as LONG as you wanted

and your mother would no longer cut them up

A kitchen big enough to hold a husband in

A job where someone pays me
to put words in a particular order,
which is a thing I once wanted so badly
I thought wanting it might break me.

And look

there it is.
The house.
The husband.
The job.
The pasta.

Little treasures,
all of them.

I put them carefully into my bag
and kept walking.

Because there is always something else
Sparkling.

Another place to see.
Another book to read.
Another version of myself
I might become.
Another little life
I might be able to carry home.

I did not hear the first thing fall.

It was that friendship

That frayed as we began to no longer dance in time

Something dear enough
that I had once assumed
dear things simply stayed.

It was the sound
of my sisters laughing
in the next room.

It was the nearness
of my friends
the easy certainty
that someone could be across town
and somehow still feel close.

They’re only a phonecall away but

never a street, neighborhood, or room

Perhaps it was my mother and father,
young enough that I did not understand
I was looking at a version of them
I would never see again.

Perhaps it was the world itself.

How big it used to be.

How every road seemed to lead
somewhere I had not yet been.

I kept walking.

I kept collecting.

And then I turned around
to admire what I have gathered
and realized there is a hole in my bag.

I cannot put my hand through it
and retrieve everything.

I cannot walk backwards
and gather the pieces from the road.

And I do not want to.

That is the strangest part.

I love the house.

I love my husband.

I love my little job
and the pasta
and the books
and the coffee
and all these ridiculous, beautiful things
I propelled myself towards via wishes and work

I am happy.

But I did not know
this Goblin Girl met life with a limited inventory.

I did not know
that while I was busy asking,
what can I have next?

the world was whispering,

do you know what you will lose?

So I suppose I am still a goblin.

Still peering toward tomorrow
for the next glimmer.
Still tempted by every little treasure
the future holds out its hand to offer.

Still carrying my bag.

Only now,
sometimes,

I stop.

I turn around.

I check the bottom.

And there is the hole.

And there are the empty spaces
where things used to be.

And I stand there
with my hands full of everything
I ever asked for,

atop a pile of treasures

glinting in the morning sun

grieving
what I never knew
I would leave behind.