**The Grammar of Goodbye**

Barcelona, 09:04 AM

The olive tree’s shadow stretches across my notebook, its silhouette a language I’m only beginning to understand. Polilla naps in the crook of a branch, her wings folded like a closed parenthesis. The suitcase is out from under the bed—not packed yet, but waiting. Seville calls tomorrow, just three days, but the air tastes different this time.

Lina sits across from me, her bare foot tapping mine under the table. She’s sketching the curve of my wrist as I hold my coffee, the way she always does before I leave. The old Sofia would’ve filled this silence with nervous chatter about itineraries. The new Sofia lets it breathe.

“Te extrañaré,” she says finally. I’ll miss you. Not “hurry back” or “be safe”—just the quiet truth of absence.

Polilla stirs, fluttering down to inspect Lina’s sketch. “¿Por qué no dibujas las maletas?” she asks. Why don’t you draw the suitcases?

Lina smiles, adding a tiny moth to the margin. “Porque no son la historia.” Because they’re not the story.

And she’s right. The old Sofia collected departures like stamps, each goodbye a fresh wound hastily bandaged with the next adventure. The new Sofia traces the creases in Lina’s forehead, the way her pencil hesitates over my knuckles—these are the real punctuation marks.

I think of my father’s voice on the phone last night (“When will you visit?”), of Polilla’s insistence on nesting in my scarf, of the grocer who now asks “¿Cuándo regresas?” instead of “¿A dónde vas?” The arithmetic of leaving has changed: it’s no longer about subtracting myself from places, but carrying them with me.

Lina’s sketch is done. She tears it out and tucks it into my passport. “Para que no olvides,” she murmurs. So you don’t forget.

But that’s the thing—I’m learning that roots aren’t undone by movement. They grow deeper in the going, in the knowing there’s a balcony light left on, a moth who’ll sulk in my absence, a woman who maps my return in pencil strokes.

Polilla lands on the suitcase handle. “¿Volverás?” Will you come back?

I zip the bag closed around Lina’s drawing. Outside, the castellers are building again. Their tower sways but holds.

The old Sofia spoke in exclamation points. The new Sofia is learning the poetry of semicolons—the pause that anticipates continuation.

“Siempre,” I say. Always.

Not an ending, but a comma.

—Sofia