The Geography of Absences in Cuba

August 20, 2026

HAVANA TIMES – September awaits me, winking from the edge of the road, but for the first time, going back to school has a different light. Shadows haunt me, and anxiety weighs on my chest. I miss the murmur of the hallways, the tight hugs of my friends, that comforting warmth of togetherness that I have needed so much during these two months of vacation.

But when I cross the threshold of the classroom, I will stumble upon the invisible map that absences always leave behind. At my school, maps are drawn on the wooden chairs that are gradually left empty. Geography is no longer in my textbook; it is in the latitudes marked by an absence.

From one month to the next, the space comes undone. One day, the laughter that lit up the back row is gone; another, the hand with which I shared strokes of color. There is no ceremony for saying goodbye, no farewell hugs, because here departures happen like a secret whispered into the wind, a quiet escape before the distance becomes permanent.

For me, solitude is no stranger. I live in the tranquility of the countryside, amid the whispering trees at my grandmother’s house and the footsteps of my mother as she comes and goes between two towns.

I love my hours of solitude. I find refuge when I lose myself in the pages of a book, in Morat playing through my headphones, or in the ink with which I bring my drawings to life on paper. My home is the solitude I choose, but the loneliness of a classroom that is emptying out feels very cold.

I tried to build a shield around myself before my boyfriend left for Brazil with his family. From the beginning, we loved each other knowing there would be an end. Our book was about to close, and so we hurried through its last verses. Four months have passed since he left, and his absence still hurts. In September, I will walk into the classroom, the chair beside mine will be empty, and his smile will live only in my memories.

Where I live, an internet signal is almost a miracle that slips through the branches. My phone remains silent, waiting for those WhatsApp groups to come back to life, but words traveling to the other side of the map move slowly and remain suspended in a time that never quite arrives.

I know that soon I will sit down at my desk, open my notebook, look into the eyes of those who are still here, and feel less alone. Being part of the group of “those of us who are staying behind” means learning every day to live in a house full of shadows.

It is true that many names will be missing from the roll call, that nothing will be the way it was before. But as long as I still have drawing, poetry, and this enormous desire to embrace those who remain, I will be able to imagine the light I need to fill each one of those empty spaces.