THE LEAVING

They say leaving is supposed to feel like freedom. That once you cross the border, you’re safe. That once you step away from the fire, you stop burning.

But they don’t tell you about the weight. The kind that settles in your chest, heavy and sharp, like all the places you’ve ever loved are still inside you, tearing at your ribs to get out. You carry them everywhere. The house you ran from. The trees that gave you shade. The laughter you can’t hear anymore because it stayed behind with the ghosts of your family.

No one talks about how the leaving never ends. Every step, you lose something. A language. A name. A part of yourself you didn’t realize could bleed. People say, “You’ll rebuild. You’ll plant new roots.” But they don’t understand.

How can you plant anything when the soil under your feet is always shifting? How can you grow when you don’t know where you’ll sleep tomorrow?

I look at baba, his shoulders bent under the weight of everything he can’t fix. I look at mama, her hands trembling as she mends our clothes for the hundredth time. And I know—we’ll keep moving. Because that’s what people like us do. We leave, and we leave, and we leave.

But some part of me is still there, in the house we abandoned, in the soil that smelled like rain after the harvest. Some part of me never left.

And I wonder if that part will ever forgive me for walking away.

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