A Red Carry-On

I bought it at Wal-Mart
in November, 2014
a red carry-on
soft as a duffel
black piping along the seams
the cheapest one on the rack
that still looked like it might endure
the weight of a life.

I remember standing there
under the hard fluorescent mercy
of the store
my hands on the handle
as if testing the grip
of a tool.

Inside it later
in the apartment lent to me
the landlord kind enough
not to ask questions
I laid out three pairs
of white underwear
still stiff in their plastic sleeves
ripped open there
on the kitchen table
that wasn’t mine.

Outside the night was wet
and November cold
the sort of rain
that makes the streetlights bleed.

I folded the clothes
I had left of myself
socks gone thin
shirts that smelled faintly
of the man I had been
before I ran.

Pants with the knees worn soft.

I packed them slowly
like someone dressing a wound.

When I slid the suitcase
into the overhead bin
on the flight away
away from that house
that life
that prison I had lived inside

I remember looking up
at the red shell of it
above my head
and thinking

so this is how it happens
a whole human history
pressed down
to twenty two inches
and a zipper.

Years later
I carried it into Goodwill
my hand on the same handle
that had once felt
like a lifeline.

Outside
my red Mustang convertible
waited in the parking lot
bright as a dare.

I left the suitcase there
among lamps
kitchen chairs
boxes of strangers’ pasts.

Driving away
I wondered
what hands would lift it next
what clothes
what grief
what small surviving hope

would settle inside it

and travel on.