But always remember that you have the strength inside of you. I believe in you, Ashira

Sweaters. Skirts. Tights and shoes and books and accessories, hair dryer and photobooks and my favorite cozy sweatshirt….

I pull items from my cases in a kind of daze.

I can’t believe I have them back. By now I’d thought they were lost forever.

I slip the thick hooded sweatshirt over my head, pull the drawstrings so the hood is snug around my ears. I wait for the old, familiar feelings of home to assuage me, but somehow, they just… don’t.

These clothes, the friendship bracelets I made with my sisters, the sparkly toiletries bag personalized with my name… they feel like they belong to another girl. A girl from another era. A younger sister, maybe, a girl whose life flowed predictably, revolving around her family — parents and siblings and home.

A girl without questions and secrets.

I pick up a pile of tops, and a package falls from between them. Something rectangular-shaped, wrapped in shiny gold paper.

For a moment, I panic — has someone tampered with my suitcase? — but then I realize it’s a lot more likely that Ima stuck this in before I left the house. She probably wanted me to find it on that lonely first night in my new home.

A wave of something — loneliness, longing, pain — overtakes me. I imagine how it could have been, if only my suitcases had arrived on time. Unpacking on that very first night, filling my new room with my familiar clothes and mementos, pieces of home. How much easier it would have been to prepare for school, to adjust to everything.

I would probably never have explored those desk drawers if I’d had my stuff. I’d never have seen that letter in the first place.

Would that have been better? Not to even know what I don’t know?