Abandoned Suitcase

Living adjacent to a city park, I've grown accustomed to the usual sights. The discarded Taco Bell bags stuffed with damp, bean-stained burrito wrappers. The squirrel who carries nest-making leaves in his mouth. And sometimes, a size 1 baby shoe in the sand, kicked off without the mother seeing.

But two nights ago, I stopped. I saw something unusual. Under the streetlight's amber glow, this rectangular gargoyle peered out at me through the misty darkness of winter.
















Over the next 48 hours, I continued to walk past this abandoned suitcase, pondering it like a melon misplaced in the cereal aisle. I wanted to unzip it, and, a few times, I walked directly towards it. But I always stopped.

The Romantic in me thought the suitcase might contain a manuscript by an undiscovered master writer. Or maybe loads of cash were inside, and upon its ethical return to the owner, they would split the tidy sum with me, 50/50.

But the paranoid skeptic inside always stopped me. He warned of the anarchists of the world who sought my anonymous demise. Maybe there were used needles infected with H1N1. Maybe there was a bomb. Or even worse, maybe there was a dead cat, split open down the abdomen with its stomach spread apart like wings.

No, for two days, I walked gingerly around the suitcase, unlocking it only with my imagination. And of course, on the third day, it moved to a new location. Obviously, the abandoned suitcase wasn't as infinite or perplexing to some people.