We are made of salt and soil—the remnants of where we have been, the promise of where we are going. Every journey requires a choice: what to carry, what to release. Some things are left behind out of necessity, others because they no longer fit the shape of who we are becoming.
Migration is a negotiation between memory and survival. The taste of home lingers on our tongues, even as we learn new languages. Our bodies remember the rhythm of old songs, even when our feet step onto unfamiliar ground. Some carry heirlooms, photographs, the weight of stories passed down. Others arrive with only themselves, their hands open, ready to build again.
But leaving is not the same as forgetting. Even when we let go, something remains—woven into our gestures, our prayers, the way we season our food. The soil of our ancestors clings to us, even in foreign lands. And the salt—the salt of tears, of oceans crossed, of sweat poured into new beginnings—reminds us that we have always been in motion, yet never without roots.
So we ask: What do we hold onto when everything else has changed? How do we honor what shaped us, even as we make room for what is still unfolding? Perhaps the answer is not in choosing between past and present, but in recognizing that we are both—the salt and the soil, the journey and the home.
