**The Algebra of Absence**
Barcelona, 09:05 AM
The suitcase sits unpacked by the door, still humming with Lisbon’s energy. I press my palm to its fabric—warm, like skin holding onto sunlight.
Five days away should feel insignificant. A comma in the narrative. But the Sofia who left Barcelona last week didn’t anticipate how the city would rearrange itself in her absence. The panadería changed their ensaimada recipe (more lemon zest, less lard). Rafa hired a new barista who makes cortados with foam hearts instead of my usual no-nonsense cap. Even Polilla seems altered—perching on my shoulder now instead of the windowsill, as if verifying I’m real.
Lina finds me staring at the fridge, where my Lisbon photos mingle with Oaxaca memories. “Pareces fantasma,” she says. You look like a ghost.
I touch a shot of Tram 28 rattling past azulejo walls—how the light caught the tracks, making them gleam like veins of liquid gold. “Es que…” I trail off.
“Ah.” She plucks a pastel de nata from my bag, nibbles the edge. “Tienes saudade.”
The Portuguese word settles between us, richer than its Spanish cousin añoranza. Not just missing, but the presence of absence. The way Lisbon’s seven hills live now in my calf muscles. The taste of ginginha still bright on my tongue. The elderly fado singer who gripped my hands after her set and whispered “A música é a casa que levamos conosco.” Music is the home we carry with us.
I reach for the mezcal bottle—halfway between souvenir and sacramental object—but pause. Instead, I pull out my phone and play Carlos’s latest voice note, letting his laughter fill the room. “Oye, cuando vuelvas a México…” When you come back to Mexico…
Lina arches a brow. “¿Cuándo es ‘cuándo’?”
I used to flinch at that question, as if commitment to one place meant betrayal to all others. But today, the answer comes easily: “Después de Navidad.” After Christmas. I gesture to the fridge, where a photo of my Barcelona friends making turrón last December peeks out from behind Lisbon shots. “Hay que estar aquí para el panellets.”
Polilla flutters onto the mezcal bottle, casting a winged shadow over my desk calendar. I notice the dates I’ve circled—November’s journalism workshop in Madrid, January’s assignment in Tangier—and realize something fundamental has shifted. The old Sofia saw travel as subtraction, each departure leaving less of her behind. The new Sofia understands: every return is multiplication.
Lina squeezes my shoulder, stealing the last pastel de nata. “Bienvenida a casa, fantasma.” Welcome home, ghost.
Outside, Barcelona hums with its ordinary magic—the clatter of café spoons, the scent of fresh ink from the newspaper kiosk, the way the light slants differently now through my window. Not because the city changed, but because I did.
I snap a photo of my unpacked suitcase, Polilla perched atop it like a sentinel. The caption writes itself: La maleta siempre abierta es también una puerta. An open suitcase is also a door.
—Sofia