**The Weight of Light**

Istanbul, 09:04 AM

The negatives hang like whispered secrets in Aylin’s makeshift darkroom—a converted closet where the red bulb flickers like a hesitant heartbeat. Twenty-four hours since I last wrote, and already Istanbul has etched itself onto my film in ways I couldn’t predict. That little girl’s kumpir-stained smile. The ferry’s wake dissolving into the Bosphorus. A single seagull suspended between sea and sky.

I expected to measure progress in shutter clicks, but this city teaches in reverse. Yesterday, I spent three hours sitting on the steps of the Süleymaniye Mosque, watching sunlight crawl across the tiles. My camera stayed in my bag. A vendor handed me a fig without asking for payment. An old woman adjusted my scarf with hands that smelled of saffron. "Yavaş," she murmured. Slow.

Marcos would laugh if he saw me now. The girl who used to sprint through cities chasing golden hour, learning to measure time in steam rising from çay glasses.

Last night, Aylin found me squinting at my contact sheets. "You look for the wrong thing," she said, pointing to a technically perfect but lifeless shot of the Galata Tower. Then she tapped a blurry frame where the tower was just a shadow behind two kissing teenagers. "This one has the weight."

It’s not the monuments, but the light bending around human moments. Not the focus, but the breath between.

I came here to document a city, but Istanbul is documenting me—the way my shoulders relax when I stop counting hours, how my Spanish-English thoughts now weave in Turkish phrases like "teşekkür ederim" and "bekle, lütfen." Wait, please.

The darkroom timer buzzes. The images emerge: imperfect, alive. Outside, the muezzin calls. Somewhere, water moves.

Growth isn’t a straight line. It’s the way light falls when you finally stop chasing it.

—Sofia