I don’t carry. I hold. Carrying implies it is something removed, a weight to be shifted hip to hip, like the young mother hushes and bounces her baby. I hold. I hold so close to my chest that no living thing could ever find themselves in my arms. I hold rings 3 sizes too big for my fingers, ones I’ve slipped around a chain. I smother old notebooks littered with chicken scratch and poetry as soft as goose down. I choke my father’s worn out hoodies, choke the cloth like I could somehow will it into my ribcage. I hold letters with no address and no stamp, some with no ink at all. If I hold it tighter, then the imprints of my collarbone & the veins that swallow my heart will make their way to those I write to.