the woes of packing: a reader's lament

oh sigh for the girl
who is packing her room
arranging her clothing
and awaiting the 'vroom'

of the plane that will (hopefully)
take her away, assuming
she doesn't have a large excess baggage fee
to pay and can limit her reading to one book (or three...)

oh sigh for the girl
with too many books
even if she squeezes them
into crannies and nooks

'that bag is still over 32 kilos,' they'll say,
and she'll jump up and down
as they take her books away
for never in a thousand years could she

choose between atwood
and dorothy sayers
between shakespeare and auden
and laurie r. king

between lindgren and molière
and creech, clarke and baudelaire
because choose she will have to, unfortunately--
it's that or pay extra per kilo, you see.

so that's her conundrum--oh what should she do
to ensure that her books can get on that plane too?
for answers she's lacking to improve her sad fare,
though she just might continue to tear out her hair...



i kind of lost the rhyme scheme there (was there ever one?) and the rhythm, but it seemed the best way to express my hopeless task of getting all 150 of my books (and all my clothes, of course) into two suitcases that weigh less than 32 kilos (like 75 pounds maybe?) each.
any ideas?