Touch move

This year will be my third year away from home.

- ANNA MAE YU LAMENTILLO

Three years since I last lived in the country whose heat, noise, and contradictions shaped me. Three years since I last woke up to the smell of breakfast drifting from our kitchen, or heard the familiar rise and fall of my fam - ily's voices filling the house. Three years of airports, visas, new rooms, new countries, new selves. And despite how much has happened, or how much I tell myself I've grown used to distance, a part of me still feels the small tremor of leaving each time I pack my bags.Maybe that is why I return often-at least in memory-to a conversation with my dad. It was one of those ordinary afternoons that somehow rearranges your life in hindsight. We were playing chess at the dining table, the way we've done since I was young. Our games were never truly about winning; they were a kind of quiet language between us.

At one point, after I made a clumsy move, he said something that seemed random at the time: "People change. I've changed over and over in my lifetime."