I’m sitting on the bed, unpacking my suitcase.

I’m not entirely sure where I am. Somewhere near the border of France and Switzerland. From the window: a bell tower, a smudge of sky, and the kind of greenery that feels alive. Spring, or something like it. The house belongs to a man named José. I hadn’t met José before this. I found him online, on one of those sites where people rent out rooms for less than you’d think possible. His place was the cheapest listing on the map. That’s how I got here.

I had packed this suitcase in a rush, between Wednesday and Thursday: 3:40 a.m. Glancing out the window, I’m not even sure what I was expecting—rockets, maybe, or fighter jets. But there was nothing. Just another cold February night in Ukraine. But it felt different. An unseen tension filled the air. I had forgotten that I’d already packed another suitcase. It sat waiting somewhere, sensible and complete. Instead, for this one, I had opened the wardrobe, pulled out drawers, overturned boxes, scattered old contents across the floor. Then I had just stood there, in the middle of it all. Numb, confused. The crying part didn’t come. I wanted it to. But nothing moved.

So I gathered what was left. The unclaimed bits and pieces. The things that hadn’t been chosen the first time. I filled the suitcase with fragments.

I was shivering, but not from the cold. The tile stove in the house was lit and baking when I touched it with my palm. I like to press my hands against it to warm them up, until my knuckles swell with heat. But you can’t take a stove with you, so I took the throw instead—a woolen Scottish throw with white tassels.

I had bought it with the idea of cutting it in half and turning it into shawls. Two of them. It was a leftover instinct from a post-Soviet childhood, where everything was made to serve multiple purposes. My mother would sew, knit, and alter. My father once wore a vest made of my gray tights. I had a scarf made of my green ones. I must have had too many tights. But I never cut the throw. And that’s just as well. I don’t have a twin to dress up with. Instead, I used to fold it carefully, different creases each time, to avoid wear, and drape it over the back of the chair. The chair matched the desk where I did homework since I was six. The desk stood in front of a window. I would look at my textbook and then at the cherry tree, which was sometimes white and sometimes golden, right in front of me. My grandfather had planted the cherry tree. Every summer, a bird would build a nest in it, but there were no chicks this past spring. I had checked.

With practicality in mind, I packed a thermos mug. You never know where you might spend the night, or whether there’ll be any place to make tea in the blur of an unplanned future. People forced from their homes by fear don’t drink tea from delicate porcelain cups adorned with little flowers. That’s reserved for those who wake slowly, who begin their days in rooms where everything stays put, on schedule, in order.

Mine is red, rough to the touch. It squeaks when I press the button to take a sip of the warm liquid. I don’t drink coffee from a thermos mug. Coffee, when sealed in metal and plastic, smells like it died long ago. That smell lingers in your mouth, clings. Even two mint candies can’t get rid of it.

Tea is better. I drink it black, always with lemon. It stains the cup, and my teeth. Once, I saw a girl drinking steaming hot tea through a straw. Nonsense. Like eating ice cream warmed up so it doesn’t cause a sore throat. I know what I’m talking about—I often had a sore throat as a child. When my dad and I went out for ice cream, I didn’t eat it on the walk home like the other kids, smearing it across my T-shirt and cheeks. No, we would bring that cold vanilla goodness back to our kitchen. My dad would take out an enamel bowl with a lid, fill it halfway with water, and set it on the tile stove. A small metal cup floated inside, cradling the white body of the ice cream. We’d stand there, the two of us, watching it slowly die. Then I’d scoop up what was left—a thin slush. That’s what disappointment tastes like.

Just one. Not an album. The album was in my first suitcase. This photo drifts from book to book, from table to windowsill, from shelf to drawer. It has no place of its own. It follows me wherever I go.

There’s my mom, my dad, and me. Although, no, not quite. Look closer. The order’s off. There’s my dad, then me, then my mom. Behind us, a bush of tall garden phlox. Pink ones. If you pull one flower out and place the tip in your mouth, it tastes sweet, like a tiny pacifier. My grandmother—she’s not in the photo—would scold me: “Don’t eat the flowers. I sprayed the garden for bugs. You’ll get sick!” It didn’t help. I sucked on phlox all the same, as long as they were in bloom.

Further back in the frame is our old gate. It looks gray in the photo, but it was bright green. My grandmother painted it every summer. Said it was to keep the rust away. At the time, I didn’t know what rust meant. I thought it was something like the midges eating away her roses. Only this one liked iron.

In the photo, my father is crouching beside me. He looks huge, but he was only as tall as I am now. I’m wearing a beret, a pink jacket, and tights that later became a vest for someone else in the family. I’m twirling a phlox flower between my fingers—either already sucked out or not yet. My mom looks serious. She’s wearing a blouse I adored because she’d let me tie the bow. I did it carefully, as if the neatness of that bow could decide everything: whether I’d win the reading competition for first graders, whether I’d run the fastest lap at the stadium, whether Sunday would be sunny and we’d go to the park to feed the swans.

Many years later, my mother confessed that she always tied the bow herself—perfectly, evenly—after I left the room. Now I know why I never won that reading competition.

The photographer, our neighbor, hopelessly in love with my mom, had brought imported film that day. Everything in the photo is pink. Time isn’t kind to prints, but it does soften, with a rose-colored lens, the memory of life long gone.

I don’t know if my teddy bear is technically plush. His fur is long gone, worn away by age and too many embraces—three generations’ worth. First it belonged to my uncle, then my cousin, and now it’s mine. It used to be nameless. Or at least, when my cousin solemnly handed it to me, he didn’t introduce it. Maybe he wanted to keep the name for himself.

I named him Mr. Jason. I was going through a Greek mythology phase at the time, and I deliberated for days. Not Zeus—he’s awful with women. Not Heracles—my teddy bear is not up to any heroic labors. Not Apollo—he’s no great beauty. But Jason—the Greek Jason who carried an old woman across a raging river. No one else would. He did. That moved me more than the Golden Fleece ever could.

For years, I fell asleep hugging Mr. Jason tightly. He smelled faintly of my perfume. One of his plastic eyes had turned yellow—probably cataracts. His legs hung by threads from the thinning canvas, through which you could glimpse cubes of crumbling red foam. Eventually, I decided he was too fragile to sleep with, so I tucked him into a box and placed it on the top shelf of the wardrobe. I forgot about him, about something that had once felt like an extension of myself.

Until now. When the world begins to crumble, we shed our thiсkened skin and expose our childishness. It’s the tender layer beneath that keeps us whole. Vulnerability, after all, is how we survive a time of dire loss.

I’ll admit right away that the first, carefully thought-out suitcase also has a scarf. But it’s a different one. It’s the best scarf in my collection—silk, square, and hand-stitched, with those instantly recognizable patterns.

This time, I’ve taken a mottled wool scarf with red roosters. It’s moth-eaten, stained with God knows what. My first memory of it: white outside, the house warm—red, even. There’s a cloud of balloons popping in my ears. I know better than to move my head; each shift brings another explosion. My grandmother heats the rooster scarf against the tile stove and presses it gently to my ear. It’s warm. The balloons burst faster now, louder—pop, pop, pop. I try to breathe between detonations. I forget to exhale.

Then she pushes a pinch of snow into my ear—a frozen drop of amber, sealed in cotton. Pop. Pop. Pop. The red roosters leap from the scarf and into my head, pecking—peck, peck, peck. The pain lifts. My mother comes home from work. Cold air rushes in with her. The heat, startled, tries to hold its ground—it scatters, bursts, and falls in soft droplets across the carpet. She kisses my forehead, checking for a fever. Her lips are cold and she smells of freshness. I fall asleep with red cockerels under my ear.

It fits in the palm of my hand, all narrow limbs and rough lines. My father carved it from a chunk of pine, soft enough to yield to the simplest tools. His penknife, now dulled and resting in a drawer, left its signature in every notch along the figurine’s flanks.

It was homework for my DIY class in school. The teacher—with three-day stubble, wearing a blue smock over shapeless trousers—stood against a wall painted the same blue in glossy oil paint, and said we had to bring a wooden carving the next day. I didn’t know how to hold a knife, let alone carve anything. I could barely cut bread. Once, while peeling an apple, I sliced two fingers so deeply they had to be stitched. But I didn’t mind. After that, I didn’t have to play the piano. But now, a figurine?

After work, my father sat near the tile stove, the air thick with the scent of his strong tobacco, and began carving: first a block, then a shape. Then, gradually, something alive began to appear.

The chamois isn’t anatomically correct. Its legs are too long. The horns curve like they can’t agree on a direction. One ear is chipped—maybe it was last year, maybe it was my doing. But still it stands, somehow, on a sliver of wood no thicker than a pencil. It teeters slightly, like it’s bracing for wind.

I brought it to school, placed it on the teacher’s desk. He pretended to believe me. A quiet conspiracy: two adults and one little girl, defying the system. Or maybe not. Maybe the system defeated all three of us.

The Hobbit. Hardcover, clothbound, with a dust jacket that vanished sometime before I understood what dust jackets were for. It was a gift from Saint Nicholas—the real one, the one who came at night and left things you didn’t ask for but very much needed.

At some point, I realized it was my mom who had slipped the book under my pillow; I grew too old to believe in fairy tales. I thought about how she had taken the number nine trolleybus to the last stop, the university, walked up the biggest avenue in the city, and wandered into our favorite bookshop, where she spent hours picking the right one. She chose The Hobbit for me. Just for me.

I didn’t know books could be like that. Light and dark at the same time. With riddles, and songs, and courage born not from muscle but from someone small stepping forward anyway. I loved it so much it frightened me. What if I lost it? What if something happened? What if someone else took it and didn’t understand? I started writing it down. Every word, line after line, into a notebook with wide margins and a red spine. As if I could outsmart loss with writing.

Then came the fear that even the notebook wasn’t enough. What if it went missing too? I picked a chapter, then another, and began to memorize. In case the world burned down, and I was the only one left to tell the story.

The notebook got lost. But the book, aged and foxed with a cracked spine, is still with me. I still remember whole sentences, though I haven’t tried to in years. They surface unexpectedly, when walking alone or waiting in a long line, like an old friend tapping your shoulder in a crowd.

I did not pack my summer clothes, because it’s winter outside, and I’ll be back soon. I didn’t pack a present for my friend, whose birthday is in a few days, because I will be back soon. I did not bring anything for work, because you can’t get much done on the road—and I’ll be back soon.

I miss the cherry tree outside my window when it blooms white. The chicks might hatch this spring and I am not there to see them. But I’ll be back soon.

José plays the piano and sings something in Spanish, melancholic and solemn.

He says, “You know, my father was also a refugee. He fled from Spain.”

I nod. I listen to Schubert’s uneven phrasing, a little offbeat, like everything in this room.

“He bought three houses up here in the mountains. They’ve all collapsed. This one is preserved the best,” he says.

Schubert falters again. Flies buzz.

I say, “I’m going out for a walk.”

I go down the stairs, carefully, mindful not to fall through the rotten steps.

Outside, it’s languid and still. The cherry trees are blooming here.

And mine, too, probably stands alone in full bloom, in front of my window.