The Inktober prompt for today is “Backpack”.
Heavy, heavy she strides. Trinkets and trowels, blankets, and worn-out bunnies, all crammed into her father’s old army backpack.
They told her it was a comfort. That it would be a reminder of what he had endured for her, for them, for their country and freedom, but although she had gladly donned it in the beginning, it had started to wear on her.
As her legs had lengthened, her shoulders had bowed from the pressure of the bag on her back. But she carried it still. Adding to it.
“Treasures.” She said. ‘Though her lip trembled as she fumbled with the clasps and secured another shell into the side pocket.
The backpack tore one day. She was walking, feet dragging with eyes cast excitedly to the horizon. The ocean was glittering and she could smell the salt on the air. As she looked up at two birds dancing above her, one of her worn-out feet caught on a rock and she tumbled.
For a moment, she struggled to get up, but there was nothing she could do. The backpack had become too heavy. The girl, now tall and thin, clutched at the remnants of her father. It was torn. The contents spilling onto the ground around her. Sobbs bubbled from the pit of her stomach, and for the first time since he had left this realm, they made their way to the surface.
She picked up her treasures, held them to her chest, and rocked them like babies. Perhaps how she wished she could be held. One by one, she poured her love into these trinkets that anchored her to her father. Her childhood and innocence.
As she placed each one lovingly on the ground, tears splashing around them, she expected to lie next to them and perish along with the torn backpack. But something happened that she did not expect.
With each treasure she let go, she noticed a sense of relief. Sadness, yes, but a space… within her. And when the time came to lay down the torn backpack, she simply detached one buckle and placed it in her pocket.
The girl stood up then. And her shoulders were not bent. She no longer struggled under the weight of trying to hold on to everything she had held so dear about her father, her childhood… her grief lying bare before her, she could now move on.
Delicately tiptoeing so she didn’t damage any of the treasures on the ground, she took one last look at the horizon and then another at the birds still dancing above her. The light had changed. The wind had shifted, and she pulled her coat tightly around her as she chose which way to go.
