17/02/2026
Life in Two Suitcases
Manuel Antonio Velandia Mora
You leave with hope bitten through
by the teeth of an uncertain future;
you travel with a heart coming apart at the seams, ready to burst,
trying to convince yourself
that you can still build a gentler tomorrow.
The imminence of farewell moistens your eyes;
you fear embraces, because you know
you will need them later to keep yourself from breaking.
You stay silent, in case your trembling voice
decides to betray you.
You think—perhaps—that this is the last night
you will sleep beside him,
the last shared breath
before the desert that awaits.
You reflect in silence
that you should have told your friendships
that your exile begins today, but you don’t:
you refuse to repeat the litany of fear,
the story of those murderous voices whispering
that you will not live,
or that, if you survive, someone you love will pay the price.
You choose not to endanger those who love you,
those who claim to be your friends,
that handful of men
who shared pieces of their lives with you
on nights that now weigh like sealed archives.
You lie—because you must—
about the reasons for your absence;
you cling to the fragile hope that, in that other life,
you will keep doing what you love
without death breathing so close to your neck.
You decide that your entire past must fit into two suitcases;
you ask yourself what is truly essential,
what fragment of memory deserves
to cross borders at your side.
You pack, unpack, repack,
as if the gesture itself
could rearrange the chaos inside you.
You choose not to sleep on that last night;
fatigue can wait.
What matters is filling yourself with tenderness
in these final hours:
the embraces, the small words,
the bodies leaning on your shoulder
as if offering you an invisible safe-conduct.
Because that—precisely that,
the vital spark these moments give you—
will travel with you.
And even if the world rips you out by the roots,
that spark will be the one thing
no one will ever be able to take away.
I mark twenty years since the day my exile in Spain began.
