Mis Marcadores Moviles Instant

Not the flat, tasseled kind you buy in a gift shop. Sofía’s bookmarks were objects . A dried maple leaf from a park in Boston. A torn metro ticket from Mexico City. A beer coaster from a bar in Seville where a boy with green eyes had taught her the difference between te quiero and te amo . A strip of washi tape from a Kyoto stationery store. A feather from a pigeon in Paris that had landed on her shoulder as she read L’Étranger .

She moved apartments every ten months. She changed jobs every spring. She ended relationships just as the leaves began to fall. People called her flighty. She called it curiosity . mis marcadores moviles

Her bookshelf—if you could call three stacked suitcases a bookshelf—held over fifty novels, each one frozen at a specific time and place. One Hundred Years of Solitude held the maple leaf. The House on Mango Street held the metro ticket. Love in the Time of Cholera held the beer coaster, slightly stained. Not the flat, tasseled kind you buy in a gift shop

“Volveré cuando las hojas caigan.” — I will return when the leaves fall. A torn metro ticket from Mexico City

One rainy Tuesday in a temporary studio apartment in Buenos Aires, Sofía picked up an old copy of Rayuela —Hopscotch—by Julio Cortázar. She had read it years ago, in another lifetime. As she opened it, something fell out.

That night, she bought a one-way ticket to Granada.

But there was one thing Sofía collected everywhere she went: bookmarks.