I always liked the idea of something holding something else

Some of my earlier memories are from pre-k mornings at my elementary school.  we’d have some time for free draw each day before Abc practice.

Most days I’d open my notebook and drag the marker across the paper, making perpendicular marks through the thin blue lines of the page, swirling all around and over, making nothing at all. Or rather, I wasn’t trying to make anything, At all. My teacher, Ms. Annika would come up and ask what I was drawing, she would record it to then label the page with my response. Often times I would give some trivial description of the scribbles. But most times I would just call it “a design”. I’d say “it’s just a design”, and I remember saying this. 

Then there were days that I wasn’t making a design. Instead I wanted to see something held; I would construct my own ‘packages’, as I called them. I’d fold the colored construction paper in such a way that it wrapped an invisible gift within itself, and secured it with tape. I can’t remember putting stuff inside, but I remember always wishing there was something to put inside.

I can recall sometimes leaving just a slip of paper in the center, maybe with something written on it. 

But other times I’d just imagine it was holding something.

I liked the idea of something holding something else,

Seventeen years later and it never went away.

I try to see what’s held inside of everything  I try to unwrap it all, like it was all left on my doorstep with a shiny bow on top

I imagine that there are things inside other things, when maybe these things are really just empty inside.

And I can’t stop doing it.

I think it’s all a Russian doll, And it all needs to be held. Like this story of me making ‘packages’ and drawing in pre-k, Im doing it right now— trying to make this story hold something

And it’s working, it’s holding something now,

And it feels like this something was in my small hands seventeen years ago in that classroom, Packaging it up in those parcels, Shipping them through time.

And here I am all these years later Overflowing with packages. Watching things holding things,  even when there is nothing being held