Packing the Poet - One Week To Go!!
- gillbenge63
- Aug 14
- 2 min read
In one week, I’ll be turning the key to a new chapter of my life — literally. A chapter with shutters, beams, sunflowers and a fig tree waiting just outside the window.
It will be "The Purple Notebook: A chapter in France"
Right now, though, my life is a patchwork of half-filled boxes, missing packing tape, and an anxious dog who thinks every cardboard box is a threat to domestic stability.
But you know — packing isn’t just about moving stuff. It's about deciding which parts of myself are coming too.
Here’s what’s going in the (many) boxes:
My purple notebook, worn soft at the edges, pages still smelling faintly of ink and coffee.
Scarves and bangles that jangle like tiny wind chimes when I walk.
The bag of crystals I swore I’d never become “that person” about — and yet, here we are.
A big bag of Adele's favourite treats because she will need coaxing out of the car (and probably into every room for the first month).
And here’s what doesn’t fit in a box, but is definitely coming with me:
The courage it took to say “yes” to the dream, even when it scared me.
A head full of poems, some still half-formed, just waiting to be poured out whilst I sit in my secret writing nook.
My hippy heart, the one I’ve finally embraced and stopped apologising for.
The soft stubbornness that’s kept me writing when no one was watching.
A whole lifetime of lessons — from loss, from love, from getting it wrong and from trying again.
Just one week from now, I’ll unpack all of it in a little corner of rural France.
And somewhere between the boxes, the poems, and the fig tree, I’ll keep becoming the poet I know I was always meant to be.
💜 Packing the Poet
I packed up my bangles
My scarves and my dreams
The wild, messy heart
Bursting out at the seams
I folded my courage
My laughter, my fears
The pages I’ve written
Through sixty-odd years
I followed my dreams
And I never lost faith
With courage as my compass
I found this poet's true place
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