Any Day Journal 14: A New Thread—Memory and Migration

As this journal continues to unfold, I find myself drawn to a quieter thread that’s been tugging at me for some time—memory and migration. As I review my old journal notebooks, I am struck by the numerous encounters I’ve had with people, places, and moments that have shaped me in quiet, lasting ways. Some were fleeting, others transformative.

These themes have shaped so much of my journey, often surfacing in unexpected ways: through lost poems, distant places, and the ache of separation.

This entry marks the beginning of a short series within the journal—reflections on memory and migration. I’ll be tracing the emotional terrain of moving, changing addresses every year or two, of what gets lost and what remains.

Part One opens with my lost poems and their lingering emotional impact.

Lost Poems

Once upon a time, there was a website where anyone—poet or not—could submit a poem. If accepted, your work would be published in an anthology alongside other contributors. You could then purchase the book for a modest fee, a tangible keepsake of your creative moment. I was one of those hopefuls. Convinced my poems had made the cut, I proudly bought the book. I never received a single royalty.

Twenty years later—yes, twenty—I decided to revisit that chapter of my life. Back in 1995, I was a newlywed, pregnant with my second child, working as a nanny, and enrolled in a long-distance course delivered through snail mail. I was naive, navigating the unfamiliar rhythms of the big city, trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. It was a strange and formative time.

Despite extensive research online, I couldn’t locate the poems or the book I had purchased. I even reached out to the International Library of Poetry, but no one seemed to know what had happened to the company behind those vanity anthologies. It was as if the whole endeavour had vanished into thin air.

I did, however, find a small clip of one of my poems, which was published under my married name, in the beat-up anthology that I purchased. (Too ashamed to say how much I paid for my own poems and those of total strangers.) Curious, I tried using Google Lens to trace it further, hoping for a digital breadcrumb—still, nothing.

But in the midst of that search, I stumbled upon something unexpected: a song titled Mama’s Boy by Dominic Fike. I listened to it on YouTube, and something in me stirred. The sadness in the melody, the ache in the lyrics felt like deja vu. It echoed the dream I had when I first wrote my poem. Back then, I had just left my three-year-old son with my mother in St. Lucia to migrate to Canada. That decision, that distance, still lives in me. Though I may never recover the poems themselves, the emotions they carried have resurfaced in new ways. Sometimes, what we lose in archives, we find in art. And sometimes, a song written by someone else can feel like a reflection of our own story.

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As I pause here, I invite you to sit with your own memories; those moments, people, and places that quietly shaped your journey.

What memories surface when you think about the places you’ve left behind or the roads that brought you here? Has migration—whether across borders or within your own heart—reshaped your sense of home?

Feel free to share a reflection in the comments. I’d love to hear how memory and movement have touched your life.

Thanks for reading, 😊jjf

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