What My Suitcase Knows About Me After Six Cities in Nine Days
A small black roller bag, unzipped at last, tells the story I have been leaving out.
My suitcase is the most honest thing I own. It is a black roller with a scuffed corner and a luggage tag that has survived more customs lines than most diplomats. After six cities in nine days I finally unzipped it on my own bed at home, and it exhaled like something that had been holding its breath across three continents.
Inside, the evidence. A silk scarf that smells faintly of woodsmoke from Reykjavik. A hotel pen from Dubai that I should not have kept and will not return. Three keycards, all expired, stacked like a little deck of cards from a game I only half remember losing. A pressed paper napkin, folded small, which I will not discuss.
Inside, the evidence.
There is a pair of heels worn down on one side, because I always lean when I am listening closely. There is a travel candle with the label rubbed off. There is a paperback I started in one city and finished in another, with a boarding pass for a bookmark that marks, if I am honest, the exact page I stopped pretending to read.
What strikes me, laying it all out, is how little of it is practical. The uniform is practical. The rest is a collection of small proofs that I was somewhere, felt something, and left before it could turn into anything heavier than a souvenir. A suitcase is a very elegant way of avoiding commitment.
I zipped it shut, set the alarm for an hour that makes no sense in any time zone, and set the bag by the door like a patient animal. Tomorrow it travels again, and so do I. If you want to know what it was like to carry all of that, and where I was headed with it, I tell the rest on TheFriend, which is the only place I keep the full inventory.
The suitcase is packed again, and it still has a few things I did not unpack for you here. Come hear what was folded at the bottom, on TheFriend.
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