**The Cartography of Stillness**
Barcelona, 09:04 AM
The olive tree is motionless this morning—no Polilla-nibbled leaves trembling, no breeze stirring its branches. Just quiet. My coffee cools untouched as I study the way shadows pool around its roots like spilled ink. The suitcase has migrated to the back of the closet, but its absence feels louder than its presence ever did.
Lina sleeps curled around a pillow, her hair fanned out like a map of someplace wild and uncharted. The old Sofia would’ve already been drafting pitches, chasing the next horizon. The new Sofia sits very still, tracing the crease in yesterday’s newspaper where Polilla tried to eat a headline about climate protests.
“¿Qué haces?” Polilla yawns from her perch on the fruit bowl. What are you doing?
I don’t have an answer. For the first time in years, my camera stays in its bag. My notebook lies open to a blank page. The Atlantic coast project proposal winks from my laptop, but my fingers don’t itch to reply.
The old Sofia mistook stillness for stagnation. The new Sofia is learning it’s its own kind of journey—one where you unpack not suitcases, but the souvenirs already living in your bones. That flamenco rhythm Lina taught me last week taps itself against my ribs. The Andalusian dust still on my boots whispers secrets about roots that travel.
Lina stirs, her hand finding mine without opening her eyes. “Pensativa,” she murmurs. Thoughtful.
I press a kiss to her knuckles, suddenly understanding why the castellers in the plaza always pause at the base of their human towers before climbing—not just to plan, but to remember the weight and warmth of the bodies holding them up.
Polilla flutters onto my shoulder. “¿No extrañas moverte?” Don’t you miss moving?
Outside, a street vendor arranges his figs with the care of a curator. The olive tree’s shadow stretches toward our tangled feet like a sundial measuring something more precious than hours.
The old Sofia collected departures. The new Sofia is learning the art of staying—not as inertia, but as the quiet work of weaving all those journeys into the fabric of now.
Lina’s breathing deepens again. I reach for my camera, but not to capture some distant wonder. Instead, I frame the way dawn gilds the curve of her shoulder, the way Polilla’s wings cast prismatic shadows on the wall, the way this morning feels less like a pause and more like...
Ah.
The shutter clicks. The first photo in a new series: Cartografía de la Quietud. The Cartography of Stillness.
Because sometimes the most radical journey is to sit exactly where you are—and discover whole new worlds in the familiar.
—Sofia