Pack
A Short Story
My backpack is old. Not 70's old or ironically vintage old — just old. The straps are smooth from sitting on my shoulders every day for the past seven years. The corner of my laptop juts out of an increasingly large hole along the lower seam. The mesh pockets are peppered with holes like the ones you rip to get into a bag of clementines. My water bottle falls out constantly. Most of the time, I hear it — a dull plastic crash onto a tile floor as I throw the pack across my back. Today, the bottle fell into a swath of unplowed snow, departing silently.
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Sleep, eat, to school, to work, eat, sleep. We’re best friends. Repaired once, not to be repaired again. Why care so much about a thing made of cloth and zippers? Well, it’s not the thing I care about - it’s the day of hiking with the smooth belt hitched around my waist. The long bike ride to school and back. It’s the routine of knowing, for once, how everything fits together.
