The man stared at the leather suitcase that sat closed on the floor. He glanced around his apartment, where the whitewashed walls were bare and his bedroom and all the other rooms were empty.
When he closed his eyes he saw his home as it had been: shelves brimming with books, little ghost lights strung up for Halloween, and a black and white photograph hanging on the wall.
He opened his eyes and the memory of those things lingered, but then evaporated into the mist where memories go to live, and to fade. He looked again at the packed suitcase, which had one unbuckled latch. His grandpa had given him the suitcase when he was younger, when he moved away from home — and that’s when he learned something strange. As soon as he buckled the suitcase completely shut, the memories of a place he’d been living, well, they didn’t disappear or lose their meaning. They just mattered less. Much less than they had the moment before.
‘It’s meant to give you a little push into the future,’ he remembered his grandpa saying. ‘Because letting go has always been hard for the people in our family.’
This was true. Standing there alone he felt awash in the memories of the place. Most of all, in that moment, he remembered a winter snowstorm where the snowflakes had been as big as cotton balls.
‘Hey,’ he whispered into the bedroom. ‘Come see these snowflakes.’
She rose very slowly out from under the bedsheets, got up, and walked to the window and looked outside with him. ‘Wow,’ she said, yawning.
He looked at her, and then he frowned. ‘You don’t even have your glasses on — you have no idea what I’m talking about.’
She turned quickly and stomped back to the bed. ‘Shut up,’ she muttered.
He chuckled.
The memory came and went, and he felt a small smile form on his face. Then he opened his eyes, and reached for the latch. 
