**The Arithmetic of Belonging**

Barcelona, 09:04 AM

The numbers don’t add up.

I realize this while counting coffee rings on my notebook—seven this week, each one a timestamp of conversations that stretched beyond un café rápido. Seven pauses in what used to be a life measured in transits and layovers. My calculator app still has last month’s currency conversions saved (Moroccan dirhams, Turkish lira), but the numbers I’m tallying now are different:

— 3: Times the fruit vendor has waved away my euros this week, insisting “Mañana, chiquita”
— 14: Stairs to my flat, each one memorized by muscle memory in the dark
— 1: Keyring now heavy with a gym pass, library card, and the absurd neon keychain Lina gave me (“Para que no pierdas tu corazón nómada”)

Aylin would call this “yerleşme matematiği”—the math of settling. She FaceTimed from a Chiang Mai night market last night, holding up fried insects to the screen. “You’d hate this,” she teased. But when I showed her the calçots I’d grilled with neighbors on the rooftop, her smirk faltered. “Wait—since when do you have a grill?”

The question lingers like woodsmoke in my hair. Since when? Since the rhythm of this city became a pulse I match without thinking. Since the Moroccan bakery started setting aside msemen for me on Sundays. Since my photography shifted from chasing golden hours to documenting the archaeology of everyday life—the wear pattern on my favorite park bench, the evolution of graffiti outside the farmacia.

Claudia finds me reorganizing my bookshelf by color instead of continent. “Dios mío,” she deadpans, “next you’ll vote in local elections.” But when she sees the framed postcard from Aylin (Istanbul’s skyline) placed deliberately beside Lina’s photo of my laundry drying alongside the abuela’s, she squeezes my shoulder. “El equilibrio,” she murmurs. The balance.

It’s not that the wanderlust has vanished—yesterday’s email included a tantalizing assignment in Oaxaca—but the calculus has changed. Now there are variables like:

— Would I miss the Thursday night sardana circles in Plaça Sant Jaume?
— Who would water Marcos’s basil when he visits his mother in Granada?
— Could I bear not seeing the zine project’s final exhibition?

The barista slides my cortado across the counter with a raised eyebrow—I’m late by my new, settled standards. “Todo bien?” he asks. All good?

I sip slowly, watching autumn light fracture through the steam. The answer surprises me with its simplicity: “Sí. Todo bien.”

Belonging, I’m learning, isn’t subtraction—it’s the quiet art of holding roots and wings in the same hands.

—Sofia