Dear Wigleaf,

What you've heard is untrue. I'm not gone, even though I've left and keep leaving. I'm an orphan without a place to call my home, slow-traveling across the globe or breathing carefully when caught in a pandemic.

But I'm a transient by choice. Not fleeing wars or hiding from prosecution. Not driven out by poverty, crime, racism, or climate change. I had the privilege to choose a brickless existence and hold on to only a paper address. It's kind of appropriate, I think, for a writer who expresses herself in a language that neither belongs to her fatherland nor is her mother tongue.

I'm not gone. I live where I'm welcome and can afford to stay, in city sublets and village houses, hotel suites, guest rooms, tents. Each time I arrive in a new place, I must first find shelter and fresh water. Afterwards, I go out to eat and meet people I can trust.

Have you ever seen the sky on a cloudless, moonless night in the Sahara? It's like the stars are falling down to hold your hand.

Today, I'm writing to you from a rooftop terrace in Mazunte, a so-called pueblo màgico on the coast in the Mexican province Oaxaca. The breeze blows my thoughts onto the screen, where they take wing as words and fly through the air toward your mind.

I'm not gone. I'm right here.

Claire