**The Geometry of Homecoming**
Barcelona, 09:04 AM
The morning light slants through my balcony doors, painting the floor in golden parallelograms. I step over them barefoot, my soles still remembering Lisbon’s cobblestones.
Polilla is perched on the edge of my open suitcase—not the packed one by the door, but the half-filled one on my bed. It holds a stack of fresh notebooks, a lens cap from my Oaxaca trip, and a jar of sal de gusano I can’t seem to stop carrying. “¿Otra vez?” she chirps. Again?
But this time, it’s different. I’m not running toward or away. The old Sofia would’ve already booked a flight by now, restless for the next horizon. The new Sofia is learning to measure distance in more than kilometers.
Lina’s voice drifts up from the courtyard: “¡Baja! Te traje algo.” Come down, I brought you something.
She holds out a pastel de nata—not from Lisbon, but from the new Portuguese bakery on Carrer de Blai. The crust flakes perfectly under my fingers. “No es igual,” she warns. It’s not the same. But the custard is warm, the cinnamon just right.
I think of Carlos’s voice note yesterday: “Cuando vuelvas…” When you come back. The words don’t tighten my chest like they used to. There’s space now for both—for the promise of return and the pleasure of staying.
Upstairs, my unfinished Tangier article glows on my laptop. The cursor blinks beside a sentence I wrote last night: “The irony of borders is that we carry them within us long after crossing.”
Polilla lands on my shoulder, her wings brushing my cheek. Outside, Barcelona hums—the clatter of plates from the panadería, the distant chords of a busker’s guitar. The light shifts, the parallelograms stretching longer across the floor.
I take another bite of the pastel. Not Lisbon, but not not Lisbon either. Somewhere in between—like me.
—Sofia