What I Hold

Every so often, I find myself
reaching for the map again,
not the one with borders and rail lines,
but the one folded somewhere in my chest—
creased with names I’ve never spoken aloud,
warmed by places I haven’t stood in
but already miss.

I hold England like an heirloom—
my grandmother in Leeds,
the streets she might have walked
with a loaf under one arm
and some unspoken hope in the other.
We were meant to go in 2020.
Instead, I cupped the silence
and waited.

Wales belongs to her—
my wife, tracing her roots to Cardiff,
Abergavenny—names that sound like psalms.
I picture her there,
not laughing exactly,
but standing still in a place
where everything makes sense for a moment.

Scotland tugs at me in the long light,
not the cities,
but the edges—Shetland, Orkney, Hebrides—
places where the wind might
lift something off your shoulders
without asking what it was.

New Zealand’s South Island—
they say it’s the real one.
I don’t need proof.
Just a pair of boots,
a track that forgets its own name,
a silence big enough
to walk in without shrinking.

Sometimes I dream of the Serengeti—
not as a safari brochure
but as breath
and dust
and wild movement
too large to be described.
I don’t want to chase it.
Just be there
while the world remembers how to run.

Namibia—
a single flamingo,
pink and trembling in a salted hush.
That’s all.
That would be enough.

Tuvalu—
a name small enough to be overlooked,
a place brave enough not to be.
If I ever go,
I will not bring a camera.
I will bring
a listening face.

And Canada—
those northern cliffs,
thousands of wings clattering
against the stillness.
Baffin Island,
where the ocean writes in long sentences
and doesn’t care
if I understand.

I carry these places
like warm eggs
fresh from the coop.
Too alive to put away.
Too beautiful to forget.

And perhaps that’s all we ever do with such places—
carry them gently,
aware that beauty and fragility
often arrive together.

I may never get to all these countries.
But they’ve already shaped how I see,
how I wait,
and what I hold most dear.