What we let fly

I don't know how to write a letter when you don't have a return address. Sometimes I think this business of wandering is an elegant way to escape. Or to search, even though I no longer quite remember what it was I set out to find.

Today I'm writing to you from an ordinary airport. The screens constantly change the destinations, but all the waiting areas look the same. You know that well. You've seen in my eyes that mixture of promise and longing every time you hug me, not knowing when or if I'll return. There's no customs harder than the one the heart crosses when it says goodbye to something that just won't go away.

I can't have love in this life I lead, or at least I can't have it the way you deserve: with breakfasts without a clock, with Sundays at the market, with the certainty of your presence at the end of the day. Work takes me from city to city as if each project were just another stop on a journey that never truly ends.

And it's strange: I travel selling solutions, ideas, futures. But the one thing I can't offer you is the present. There's no app that can organize emotional time, no software that can ease the loneliness of your nights when my voice echoes from another time zone.

I've tried to imagine it all: you moving in with me, us working remotely, putting our roots in the air. But love, I realize, doesn't survive on attempts alone. It needs soil, shared routines, the everyday touch of small things: leaving shoes in the entryway, arguing about the grocery shopping, knowing the other person is there even when they're not speaking. How can I give you that when I'm just a postcard with a constantly changing background?

The pain isn't seeing you leave, it's being the one who always leaves. Every time I leave you on the platform, something inside me freezes. As if the true cost of the ticket isn't in the boarding pass, but in the soul one leaves behind. I watch you walk away and wonder if I'll ever be able to stop leaving. If this life I chose is truly mine, or if I've simply become its employee.

And yet, something has begun to change. I don't know if it's age, weariness, or the silence that accumulates when you always sleep alone. But lately, between flights, I find myself longing for simple things. A shared cup of coffee in the morning. The weight of another breath beside me at night. Someone who looks at me without needing to translate, without needing maps or context. That kind of quiet love that goes unspoken, but stays.

I used to think I could handle anything. That freedom meant not depending on anyone. Now I'm starting to think that true strength is having someone to return to, someone to hold onto when there are no more trips to justify running away. And you, without knowing it, have been that constant presence. That imaginary station that doesn't appear on Google Maps but to which my soul returns again and again.

Sometimes, in the middle of a presentation, my mind wanders. I imagine you making coffee, looking for a song for the morning, folding a blanket we don't share. I'd like to tell you I'm coming back, that this time I'm staying. But I can't yet. I still don't know how.

Perhaps love isn't impossible for those of us who travel, but it is more fragile. Like those vases carried wrapped in clothes, knowing that one wrong turn could break them. You have been brave, you have believed more than once. I have been cowardly, always choosing the next stop over the anchor.

I don't want this letter to be a goodbye. It's just a confession, a whisper written in turbulence. I hope you read it one day without pain. I hope you find a love that doesn't have to excuse itself with schedules and airlines. And if it isn't love, may it at least be peace.

I'll keep flying for a while longer. But every time I see a window with warm light in the middle of the night, I'll think of you. Of what almost was. Of what still beats, like a destination not marked on the ticket, but always present in my heart.

With the wandering affection of one who loves in transit,

I.