**The Alchemy of Unpacking**

Barcelona, 09:04 AM

The olive tree’s leaves catch the morning light on my balcony, their edges glowing like gilded parchment. I woke to find Polilla curled in its pot, her wings folded like a tiny tent over the soil. “Le gusta,” Lina murmured when she saw, sipping her coffee beside me. She likes it.

The suitcase is still on my bed, but this morning, I lifted the sweaters out one by one. Not to pack or unpack, but to remember. The Dublin wool, the linen tunic from Marrakech, the frayed denim jacket I bought at a flea market in Buenos Aires—each carries the weight of a place, but none of them feel like anchors anymore. They’re just threads in a fabric I’m still weaving.

Polilla flutters to my shoulder as I run my fingers over the jacket’s loose stitching. “¿Qué haces?” she asks. What are you doing?

“Aprendiendo a soltar,” I reply. Learning to let go.

But it’s not the letting go of the old Sofia, who fled before anything could root her. It’s the letting go of the fear that staying in one place means abandoning the others. Lina laughs when I say this, her knee knocking against mine. “No es una competencia, mi vida,” she teases. It’s not a competition, my love.

The olive tree’s roots are still shallow, cradled in terracotta, but it’s already bending slightly toward the sun. I think of the rosemary sprig pressed in my notebook, the metro ticket folded in my pocket. The way Polilla returns to this balcony even though her wings could carry her anywhere.

I zip the suitcase shut and slide it under the bed. Not because I’ve decided never to leave again, but because I’ve decided that coming back is its own kind of journey.

Lina hands me a magdalena, its surface cracked like a desert floor. “Para celebrar,” she says. To celebrate.

Outside, the city hums below us, steady and alive. The old Sofia would’ve been halfway to the train station by now, chasing the next horizon. The new Sofia bites into the magdalena, sweet and crumbling, and thinks: Horizons are beautiful. But so is the ground beneath your feet.

Polilla lands on the rim of my coffee cup, her reflection shimmering in the dark liquid. “¿Y ahora?” she asks. And now?

I brush a fleck of sugar from my lip. “Ahora, escribo.” Now, I write.

—Sofia