The Weight of Leaving

It is 3:14 am. The house is holding its breath, and I am finally listening to the silence I spend all day trying to drown out. There is a specific kind of ache in watching things move away. We spend our lives building walls, planting roots, and convincing ourselves that staying is the only way to be safe. But then there is the instinct to go—the sudden, sharp pull toward somewhere else, somewhere colder, somewhere unknown. It is a quiet violence, this urge to abandon the familiar for the sake of survival. We leave pieces of ourselves in the places we depart, scattered like shadows on the ground. I wonder if the ones who leave ever truly arrive, or if they are just perpetually suspended in the act of vanishing. Is it the destination that calls to us, or is it simply the relief of no longer being where we were?

Moslem Azimi has captured this restless spirit in the image titled Immigration. It feels like a map of everything we are afraid to lose. Does the horizon look any kinder from the other side?