Ave Migratoria

An invisible map that walks with me. 🗺️

A couple of years ago, during a volunteer program, a pastor told me that grief is a much more frequent experience than the one we usually link only to death. Wow, I thought. Let’s see where this conversation takes us. Today I agree with her.

This year, through its circumstances and the memory of that conversation, I came to understand that grief also extends to friendships that faded, personal projects that never bore fruit, plans that collapsed, opportunities that never arrived, and those imagined horizons that sometimes feel endlessly delayed.

My intention in writing is not to leave you with a bitter or pessimistic taste. Rather, it is to continue in that vulnerability where I share my plans and dreams—without resentment. Instead, with a different kind of hope: a nostalgia that lets me dream again, this time with calm and a bit more wisdom.

Huascar

It’s the street where I grew up. Well, I didn’t grow up on the street, but you know what I mean.

There I once played los 7 pecados: you’d throw the ball in the air, call someone’s number, and that person had to catch it and yell “stop.” Then they’d take a few steps and choose who to throw it at; if they hit, the other lost a life. Or something like that. (I never really knew why it was called that).

I chased old colectivos, trying to match their speed. Colectivos were old cars that would wait in street corners to collect passengers and then take them to a repetitive destination. Some sort of ride sharing.

I walked a thousand times to the church around the corner, not just on Sundays but almost daily.

There my phone was once stolen. There I rode a bicycle that wasn’t even mine, but the family’s.

The tunnel

I dreamed. And I dreamed all the time.

Sitting at the head of the table, staring at the refrigerator, I would freeze, transported into another dimension. I imagined a tunnel.

Lying on my green bedspread, eyes on the ceiling, listening to Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky—I pictured the same tunnel.

Sometimes I even drew in the middle of that imaginary tunnel. On the floor, or on the wall.

Istanbul

Orhan Pamuk, one of my favorite writers, wrote Istanbul. I told my mother about the book, and she read it too.

I don’t know what it was about that city that captivated me so much I even tried to stay. In the end, I returned to Romania.

Maybe it was the cats, or the crowded streets that reminded me of Huáscar at Christmas. Maybe it was the fish sandwich, so familiar to the breakfasts of my hometown in northern Peru. Or maybe it was simply the smell of the sea.

A nearby nostalgia that felt like something far away.

A job

Once I lost a job, and with it many other things. I thought getting another one would solve the problem, but I completely ignored what I had really planned for myself.

It wasn’t only about money: it was about the direction I wanted to take, the timing I thought I needed.

It’s true that, eventually, everything will be fine. But I don’t write to soothe or to deny. I write to acknowledge. To think, to feel, and to speak out loud. To turn the page, if I want.

I lost the street where I grew up, and that’s what it means to grow.
I lost the tunnel and its drawings.
I lost Istanbul and its fish sandwich.
I lost personal projects when I lost my job.

But I learned to name what was gone. And I learned to sit down and tell you about it, calmly. With the hope that, by letting go of all those things, I’ve made space for what is still to come.

Thanks for reading. 🦄