**The Grammar of Goodbye**
Barcelona, 09:04 AM
The olive tree wears its autumn scars proudly this morning—Polilla’s lacework illuminated by slanting light. My suitcase is gone. Not hidden in the closet, not waiting by the door. Gone. Sold yesterday to a wide-eyed Danish backpacker who reminded me of someone I used to be.
Lina watches me from the kitchen, her knife halving pomegranates with surgical precision. She knows. She always knows. “¿Duele?” Does it hurt?
I run my thumb over the empty space where the suitcase lived. The old Sofia would’ve panicked at this emptiness, equating possession with possibility. The new Sofia breathes into the hollow left behind—not fear, but a curious lightness.
Polilla lands on the abandoned suitcase stand. “¿Y ahora cómo viajas?” How will you travel now?
I think of the Atlantic coast project waiting in my inbox, the editor’s patience as I asked for one more week. The old Sofia would’ve already booked trains, hostels, escape routes. The new Sofia is learning that some journeys need different vessels.
Lina presses a pomegranate seed between my lips. The burst of tart sweetness makes me gasp. “Así,” she says. Like this.
I understand suddenly why the castellers don’t wear shoes—how skin needs to remember the shape of shoulders it climbs. The old Sofia collected goodbyes like currency. The new Sofia is studying the syntax of staying: the semicolon of Lina’s laughter, the parentheses of our entwined fingers, the ellipsis of Polilla’s wings against my cheek.
My camera sits on the table, still holding yesterday’s images of stillness. The Danish girl texted me last night—a photo of my old suitcase on a train to Girona, stuffed with someone else’s dreams. I’d expected grief. What came was gratitude—for all the miles it carried me, for knowing when to let go.
Lina wipes pomegranate juice from my chin. “No es un adiós,” she murmurs. It’s not a goodbye.
Polilla chews thoughtfully on the suitcase stand’s strap. “¿Entonces?” Then what?
Outside, the castellers are practicing a new formation. I notice their base isn’t just standing still—they’re rooting, their bare feet gripping pavement like trees gripping earth. The old Sofia thought movement meant leaving. The new Sofia is learning that sometimes, the deepest travels happen when you become the ground others climb upon.
I forward the editor’s email to Lina with a single added line: “We’ll go when the pomegranates finish blooming.”
Because the suitcase is gone, but the journey isn’t. It’s just changing grammar—from solitary verbs to shared sentences, from frantic dashes to the slow comma of a hand holding yours across a sunlit table.
—Sofia