Five Minutes

The battered suitcase sat on the edge of the bed, its leather skin worn smooth by years of gripping, tossing, and enduring. Inside, it was hollow, yawning wide like a hungry mouth, waiting to consume the remnants of a life. Ana stood over it, her shoulders taut with the weight of decisions she hadn’t yet made.

She could feel the weight of her entire existence pressing on her chest as she looked at the empty suitcase. Every moment of her life up until this point had led her to this moment—this decision. What could she carry with her? What was worth the space, the weight? What would she leave behind?

The knock on the door startled her.

“Five minutes,” came a voice muffled by the cheap motel walls.

Five minutes. Five minutes to decide who she was and what parts of herself she could carry forward into a future she could barely imagine.

She took a shaky breath and began.

The first thing she packed was a photograph. It was black and white, edges curled from years tucked in wallets and pinned to corkboards. Her father stood in the foreground, a sturdy figure with an axe slung over his shoulder, her mother at his side, apron dusted with flour. They were smiling. Ana ran her thumb over their faces, the memory sharp and clear: the smell of woodsmoke, her mother’s laughter like the crackle of fire on cold winter nights.

Her father had taught her everything—how to wield an axe, how to survive when the world seemed like it wanted to break you. He had been a quiet, strong man, who always had a way of making things seem right, even when they were falling apart. Her mother, though, had been the soul of their home. The laughter, the warmth, the security. Ana hadn’t realized until now how much she would miss the small comforts—the smell of her mother’s cooking, the rhythm of their lives that had been shattered so suddenly. The photo was a reminder of a life that had been full, even though she’d never truly appreciated it until it was gone.

She tucked the photo into the suitcase’s side pocket, anchoring it there like a talisman.

Next came her passport, though she hesitated before adding it. Its blue cover bore the crest of a country she no longer belonged to, stamped with years of movement—crossings and leavings, arrivals and departures. It was both her prison and her key. She had once believed it would be her ticket to a better life, but now it felt like a relic of a time she had outgrown. The pages, once filled with stamps and visas, were now empty, a metaphor for her current state of limbo.

Still, she slipped it into the suitcase. For all the weight it carried—both literal and metaphorical—she couldn't leave it behind. It was the last thread tying her to the life she’d known, the life she was about to leave behind for good.

The clothes were harder. She had two piles: necessary and sentimental. Necessary meant jeans, T-shirts, a jacket sturdy enough for any weather. Sentimental was a tangle of silks and lace, a red scarf that still smelled faintly of jasmine, a dress that had once made her feel invincible.

The red scarf had been her grandmother’s. It had been wrapped around Ana’s neck the first time she’d stepped out into the cold winter air on her own. The dress—well, that had been her first real date with Julian. He had looked at her like she was the only woman in the room. The memory of how she had felt—alive, powerful, loved—was a warmth that was hard to shake, even as she folded the dress and set it aside. She could still remember how it had clung to her skin, how it had swayed as she danced, how the evening had felt like it could last forever. But forever, she knew now, was an illusion.

She couldn’t bring it all.

“Four minutes!”

Ana’s hands trembled as she set aside the scarf. Her throat tightened, but she moved on.

The knock came again, louder this time.

“Three minutes!”

Her heart raced. The suitcase was filling up—books, journals, her grandmother’s brooch, an envelope of letters she hadn’t been able to throw away. She ran her fingers over the spine of Jane Eyre, hesitating. It had been her companion on countless nights, its pages dog-eared and underlined. But it was heavy, and space was running out.

There were other books, of course. She had amassed a library over the years, shelves filled with the words that had soothed her, inspired her, helped her make sense of a world that often felt senseless. But Jane Eyre had always been more than just a book to her. It was a story of resilience, of love that could not be denied, of the ability to stand tall no matter the odds. It had been her escape, her guide. But she couldn’t carry it anymore. It was too heavy.

The suitcase snapped shut with finality.

“Two minutes!”

Ana left the book behind.

The final minute.

Ana stood frozen, staring at the suitcase. It was nearly full, but something was missing. Something vital. She scanned the room—a pair of worn boots by the door, a framed photo of a beach she’d never visited, the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. None of it felt important. None of it felt like her.

There was nothing left to pack. Nothing left to define her. She had packed the essentials, the memories, the pieces that had shaped her. But there was no clear vision of who she was becoming. She didn’t know where she was going or what she would find when she got there. There was only the weight of the suitcase and the pressure of time.

The sound of tires crunching gravel snapped her out of her trance. They were here.

With a surge of clarity, she grabbed the notebook from the desk. Its pages were blank, untouched except for the scrawled name on the first page: Ana Ferreira. Her name. Her future.

For all her hesitation, she realized she had always carried her future with her—somewhere between the lines, between the pages of every book she’d read, in every decision she had made, in every relationship she had lived and lost.

She shoved the notebook into the suitcase and snapped it shut.

The door burst open as she zipped the case closed. Two men in dark suits entered, their expressions unreadable. “Time’s up,” one of them said.

Ana nodded, gripping the suitcase handle so tightly her knuckles turned white. The weight of it was staggering—not just its physical heft, but the lives it contained. The life she had lived and the life she was about to create.

“Do you have everything?” the man asked.

“Yes,” she lied.

They escorted her out of the room, down the narrow hall, and into the night. The air was crisp, stars scattered across the sky like shards of broken glass. A black car idled by the curb, its engine purring softly.

Ana slid into the backseat, the suitcase on her lap. She didn’t look back as the car pulled away, leaving the motel—and the fragments of her past—in the rearview mirror.

As the miles stretched out before her, Ana leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She didn’t know where she was going or who she would become when she got there.

All she knew was that everything she needed was in that suitcase.

And everything else, she would learn to live without.