**The Geometry of Distance**

Barcelona, 09:04 AM

The suitcase is gone.

Not metaphorically—I literally can’t find it. I turn my flat upside down, checking under the bed, behind the wardrobe, even though it’s absurd to lose something that size. Then my phone buzzes. A photo from Lina: my bright blue suitcase standing proudly in her hallway, packed with half my clothes and a sticky note that reads “Ensayo general”—dress rehearsal.

I burst out laughing. Of course she’d stage an intervention.

Yesterday’s bravado about “evolution with witnesses” feels flimsy now, like I’ve been reciting lines from a play I’m not sure I’ve memorized. Lina arrives with café con leche and zero sympathy. “Necesitas practicar el desapego,” she says, stirring sugar into my cup with the air of a psychologist prescribing tough love. You need to practice detachment.

But that’s the irony—I’ve spent years perfecting detachment. What terrifies me now is the opposite: leaving things (people) I’m attached to. The math is all wrong—how can three weeks in Oaxaca feel longer than six months in Hanoi ever did?

We walk to Barceloneta so I can photograph the fishermen mending nets. Click—the frayed ropes blur in my viewfinder. Click—their hands move with the same rhythm as Marcos kneading dough at the bakery. Lina watches me adjust the aperture. “Ves?” she says softly. You see? The composition is the same, only the light changes.

I think of Aylin’s voice note this morning—“Just remember: el que se fue a Sevilla, perdió su silla”—but she’d cut off the proverb’s second half. The one who left for Sevilla lost their chair... but gained the world.

The suitcase reappears at my door by evening, now containing:
— A sketch from Lina of Polilla wearing a sombrero
— A bag of panellets from the abuela downstairs (“Para el Día de Muertos”)
— My own postcard, purchased months ago in Istanbul, with a new message scrawled on the back: “Las distancias son líneas que dibujamos, no muros.” Distances are lines we draw, not walls.

I run my finger along the suitcase’s sturdy handle. Maybe that’s the growth—not in becoming someone who doesn’t ache when leaving, but in learning to carry the ache without letting it calcify into fear. To pack a suitcase not as an act of escape, but as an exercise in trust.

Marcos calls as I’m zipping it up properly. “Oye,” he says, “trae buen mezcal.” Bring back good mezcal.

I trace the stitching on the suitcase’s side—still stiff, not yet softened by miles. “Sí,” I promise. “Y vuelvo con historias.”

And I’ll return with stories.

—Sofia