Two blocks of crumbling pavement past the embassies with their iron gates and foreign flags lifting beautifully in the Caribbean wind like freedom had an address and we did not
I remember the terrible contrast of it
chauffeurs polishing black cars while old women downstairs watered thin soup to feed five mouths
Diplomats drinking imported whiskey behind guarded glass while boys in torn sandals kicked flat soccer balls through alleyways smelling of salt kerosene and exhaustion
And yet the ocean belonged to everyone
That was the unbearable beauty of Cuba
The poor could stand at the Malecón at dusk beside men who had never missed a meal and both would fall silent before the same enormous water
Because the sea did not care who was oppressed and who carried a passport out
It touched every stone equally
At night the waves struck the seawall so hard the spray reached the streets cool against our faces like the island itself refusing to die quietly
I grew up understanding freedom not as politics
but as distance
As horizon
As the ache of watching ships become smaller and smaller until they dissolved completely into another life
Some nights the grownups lowered their voices when certain subjects entered the room
But the ocean the ocean never whispered
It roared openly beside us
Restless Uncontained
I think that is why Cubans carry sadness so elegantly
We were raised beside something infinite while living inside limitation
Raised hearing waves crash against stone over and over and over again
as if the earth itself believed no wall should remain standing forever
Even now far from that coastline I still need water near me
Not for leisure Not for beauty
For memory
Because somewhere inside me there is still a little girl walking toward the sea at twilight past embassies glowing gold past tired buildings collapsing inward past the unbearable divide between the free and the trapped
believing with her entire heart that the horizon meant there had to be more than this
I think something inside me permanently altered the day I left the hospital with my oldest son in my arms and nowhere to go afterward
My stomach stitched in perfect lines The nurses speaking softly around me as if tenderness alone could disguise abandonment
Outside families loaded cars carefully
Fathers adjusting blankets Women leaning back into passenger seats flowers resting in their laps like proof they had been carried gently through the violence of becoming
‘Rooftops’ | Charcoal | Graphite
And there I stood holding my newborn trying not to let humiliation be the first thing he inherited from me
So I called a taxi
I remember the driver asking for the address and the terrible realization washing over me
I did not even have a key to enter my own home
God . .
Even now all these years later I can still feel the animal panic of it
Not woman Not wife Not mother
Animal
A creature trying to shelter her newborn from storm weather with nothing but her own exhausted body
The taxi dropped us off quietly and I remember standing there holding my son against my chest the evening air cooling the sweat on my skin realizing I had nowhere to go
So my neighbor let us inside
And something about that moment scarred me more deeply than childbirth ever could
Because the physical pain was irrelevant
None of it compared to the humiliation of standing outside your own door with a newborn in your arms feeling less like a human being and more like some stray cat searching desperately for shelter before nightfall
And the terrible part is almost no one knew
Not my family Not friends Not even my son
Especially not my son
Because I refused to poison his love for his father with the truth of what happened
So I swallowed it
Quietly Daily For years
And perhaps that is where the real scar formed
not in flesh but in silence
The performance
God . . how wickedly I fought to preserve appearances after that
I became composed Functional Capable
I built warmth around my children while privately feeling like some weather-beaten creature dragging itself through winter on instinct alone
People praised my strength
They had no idea strength sometimes looked like crying silently in bathrooms washing your face then walking back in because small eyes were watching and you refused to let them witness the storm
‘Rooftops’ | Charcoal | Graphite
And maybe that is why I dream of rooftops
Because roofs understand what it means to endure weather publicly while splitting apart slowly underneath
Rain Heat Storms Lightning
Still from the street they appear intact
Just like I did
But some nights when the world quiets enough I can still see her
that younger version of myself stitched closed too quickly holding a sleeping newborn outside a locked door already understanding that survival was no longer temporary
Drag blankets across the incline let the night air raise goosebumps along my arms learn the language of wind instead of human disappointment
Because roofs understand things houses do not
A house remembers too much
The rooms hold emotional fingerprints The walls repeat old conversations quietly at night Even silence feels furnished
But a roof a roof faces the sky directly
It knows rain intimately Knows the ache of August heat Knows hail lightning the slow ruin of seasons and still remains open to the atmosphere
I think I belong to that kind of existence now
Open-air Half-feral Emotionally exposed to weather
I imagine myself there at midnight flat on my back watching clouds drag themselves across the moon like exhausted thoughts refusing sleep
The cold fronts arriving first as whispers The smell of rain climbing upward from the earth Tree branches below me thrashing softly in the dark like grief trying to become visible
And for once nothing asking anything of me
No performance No explanations No pretending the body is not carrying entire oceans of feeling through ordinary life
Just me and the terrible beautiful atmosphere of being alive
Maybe spring would soften me there
Maybe summer storms would teach me how to come apart correctly
Maybe winter with its clean unbearable cold would finally quiet the constant machinery of longing inside my chest
And maybe that is why I ache for height
because sadness feels different closer to the sky
Less like drowning More like weather
Passing through Electric Uncontrollable Briefly luminous
Some nights I swear I could sleep there forever letting moonlight collect along my skin letting rain baptize every memory out of me until I became less woman and more horizon
something no longer trapped inside walls but stretched endlessly open beneath the enormous dark mercy of night
to press it into beautiful language where it could be mistaken for art instead of ache
i learned long ago how to make loneliness appear elegant
how to carry devastation with composed hands how to smile through exhaustion how to turn silence into something almost holy
i became very skilled at surviving beautifully
but some loves arrive like a hidden fracture beneath ice
silent at first nearly invisible
until one day everything beneath you gives way
and suddenly there you are
standing inside the carefully ordered structure of your own life surrounded by rituals responsibility and the exhausting dignity of self-containment
realizing your body has begun longing again against your permission
then someone enters your solitude gently
looks at you too carefully learns your exhaustion by sight touches you as though your sadness is something fragile enough to deserve tenderness
so forgive me
this is not usually how i speak
but fuck
‘This Fucking Love’ | Charcoal
i saw the holiest parts of myself ruined by this fucking love
not ruined like fire ruins a house no ruined the way salt ruins water quietly completely until nothing inside you tastes the same again
God . . what a vulgar miracle it is to meet someone late in life who reaches into you like he has lived there before
i am not talking about lust
‘This Fucking Love
lust is a bright bird striking itself against the dark glass of night beautiful frantic gone by morning
i am talking about the terrible holiness of someone learning your exhaustion by sight of someone hearing the difference between your public laugh and the real one of someone touching your leg like he is trying to calm an animal he does not want to scare away
this fucking love
has me feeling
like i could literally crawl out of my skin carrying this ache in my chest like contraband
at work at stoplights answering emails pretending to discuss ordinary things while internally an entire cathedral is collapsing in slow motion
because the body knows
the body knows when another body feels like home
and maybe that is the most frightening part
not that this love appeared but that after all these years all this surviving all this pretending to be beyond devastation
I sit here digitally composing words across a screen while somewhere far away my son’s handwriting still exists on paper
creased softly at the folds forty-five days old already by the time it reached my hands
And nothing about modern life can compete with that
Not the blue glow of notifications Not the speed of a text arriving mid-thought Not the endless stream of people speaking without ever truly touching one another
Because ink carries the body with it
The pressure of his hand The pause between sentences The places where he pressed harder without realizing emotion had entered the page
I opened the envelope slowly like people used to open news from war carefully—reverently already afraid of loving it too much
And somehow this letter lifted my spirit in ways nothing else has been able to lately
For one suspended second I forgot distance Forgot oceans Forgot time zones and deployments and the unbearable mathematics of missing someone
I forgot the years moving forward
I was no longer standing in my kitchen holding paper beneath morning light
I was simply his mother again close enough to hear his voice in the next room close enough to believe love still travels faster than grief
And I wanted to archive this feeling somehow
Fold it carefully into a drawer Place it beside kindergarten photographs old report cards little league schedules the backpacks I could never throw away
As if tenderness could be preserved like pressed flowers between heavy pages
As if a mother could save a moment before life carried it off again
Because the terrible thing about joy is how quickly it understands it cannot stay
So I stood there quietly holding the letter against my chest like something alive
trying to memorize the exact shape of being needed the exact sound of my spirit returning to me through his handwriting
And for a moment this loud technological world disappeared
No algorithms No scrolling No noise
Only a mother standing silently holding proof that space and time are not always strong enough to keep the heart from returning home
Forty-five days ago and I cannot stop thinking about the fact that his love had already been traveling toward me while I was still living ordinary life unaware of it
Forty-five days
Forty-five mornings I woke up not knowing a piece of him already existed in the world trying to find its way back to me
Do you understand how devastating that is?
That while I was awake or asleep his handwriting was somewhere moving through darkness
sealed inside trucks resting in forgotten bins crossing highways at night beneath exhausted stars
all because my son sat down one day and missed me enough to let his hand speak
And suddenly modern life feels so empty to me
These instant little messages we fire at each other all day without breath in them without weight without silence
But a letter
a letter suffers distance
It earns arrival
For forty-five days the page carried his touch without mine
The same hand I once held crossing parking lots The same hand that learned how to write its own name while I stood nearby believing time moved slowly
God I did not just read his words
I felt time itself collapse
And there he was again somehow inside the pressure of certain letters
Forty-five days old already
By the time I touched the page he had already changed a little
Laughed at things I did not hear Walked through evenings I did not see Carried worries silently without me beside him
That is motherhood perhaps . .
the lifelong ache of realizing your children continue becoming people in rooms you cannot enter
Still
when I saw the word “Mom” written there in the same familiar slant he has carried since boyhood
something inside me broke open so quietly I almost mistook it for peace
Because after all the years all the growing all the distance all the necessary separations life demands from us
some part of him still writes home like I am the safest thing he has ever known
Kindergarten dinosaurs faded superheroes broken zippers ink stains the straps worn thin from years of carrying small important things
They sit inside plastic totes now stacked quietly in the house like sealed chapters of a life that happened too fast
Sometimes I open them
And suddenly the years come rushing back
little lunch boxes crumbs at the bottom folded spelling tests a forgotten pencil the smell of childhood still hiding faintly in the fabric like time never fully left
People say: why keep all of that?
But mothers understand
Because those backpacks once moved through this house attached to small boys with untied shoes sticky hands and entire universes still tucked inside their laughter
I carried them through field trips divorce growing pains late-night homework broken hearts and all the ordinary holy moments that disappear before you realize they are becoming memory
Now the house is quieter
The backpacks do not move anymore But when I see them I remember this truth
for a little while I was the center of somebody’s whole world
And maybe that is why I cannot throw them away
Because inside those faded bags lives proof that love once ran wildly through these rooms calling me Mom
As if longing sounds less dangerous when folded into ordinary language
And maybe for some people it does
Maybe some hearts were taught survival before confession
I used to think harbors were built for ship for battered things dragging entire storms behind them for vessels returning at impossible hours and their lights barely surviving the fog
But now I think a harbor is simply what happens when something weary finally finds the one place it can soften
Maybe that is why you keep asking
Where I am
Not because you need directions
But because somewhere inside you my existence has become a shoreline
something your spirit checks for before resting
So now when I think of harbors I no longer imagine docks or boats
I imagine two people finding shelter inside the sound of each other’s voice
Has existed in art longer than memory itself waiting grieving remembering becoming
The harbor is not merely a place in these sketches It is the human condition the shoreline between staying and leaving
Smudging of a Harbor | Graphite
I drew the figure again and again in charcoal because charcoal behaves like memory it smudges disappears darkens where touched too often
And the lighthouse became abstract on purpose
Some people are not meant to be rendered clearly Some loves survive only in silhouette
“Harbor | Charcoal
So I kept stripping the image down less harbor less certainty more white space more silence until all that remained was a woman an ocean and the unbearable softness of standing still while something inside her kept drifting toward shore
Watched a man bluefish near shore and called him my friend
Not because I knew him deeply but because loneliness sends strange signals across water and sometimes another lonely thing answers
He drifted there beyond the tide line half man—half sea moving through the dark current like a ship that had spent too many years navigating storms alone
And I thought about love then
How women often stand at the shoreline wanting arrival
Wanting something that docks fully Something that lowers its anchor honestly Something that says here I am I am no longer drifting
But some men love like the sea itself
Harbor | Charcoal | Watercolor
They come close in waves Retreat quietly Return again under different weather
Not because they feel nothing
Because they feel too much and fear what happens when a heart finally reaches harbor
So they remain partly offshore close enough to see the lanterns burning close enough to hear tenderness calling from land yet unwilling to surrender their last route of escape
And women
women become lighthouse keepers in these loves
Faithful Exhausted Standing in terrible weather trying to interpret distant signals correctly
Was that warmth? Was that love? Was that merely loneliness passing briefly through the harbor again?
The fish-tail made sense to me then
Because some people belong partly to deep water
Partly to solitude Partly to longing
They want intimacy the way sailors want shore after months at sea
desperately romantically and with absolutely no idea how to live there peacefully once they arrive
Still, there was gentleness in him
The tide carried him softly as though even the ocean understood how exhausting it is to spend a lifetime torn between closeness and freedom
If I could I would place every fear I have for my sons inside a small wooden box and leave it out in the yard
I think about that box often
I imagine it sitting there alone beneath the weather the grass growing slowly around it rainwater darkening the wood August heat opening tiny cracks along the lid
A plain little box holding all the unbearable parts of motherhood
At first the box would have held small things
Fevers in the middle of the night Tiny shoes by the door The sound of them crying from another room The terrible helplessness of hearing your child cough while the whole dark house waits with you
Back then I thought motherhood was about protecting
I did not yet understand that motherhood is mostly about enduring
‘Motherhood’
So the years passed and the box grew heavier
Into it went first heartbreaks Late-night drives Silences The fear that arrives when your children begin walking further and further away from your arms
And now my sons are men
Men in uniform Men standing inside realities I cannot soften for them
‘Motherhood’
So now the box holds oceans
It holds unanswered messages It holds the terrible imagination of mothers It holds the sound of a phone not ringing It holds every silent prayer I have whispered into the light
If I could I would leave the box outside forever
‘Motherhood’
I would let rain kneel over it through the night Let thunder shake it open Let wind carry pieces of my fear away through the trees
I would let winter freeze it stiff Let summer split the wood apart slowly until the earth itself began carrying some of the weight for me
Because I am tired of carrying the box inside my body
Tired of setting it beside my coffee each morning Tired of carrying it room to room invisibly while the world continues normally around me
And still when I close my eyes the box becomes lighter again
Inside it
I find warm little hands clenched in mine Their laughter moving through the hallway
Maybe that is the true shape of motherhood
a small wooden box filled first with tenderness then with fear then with all the love in the world a human being can no longer survive carrying alone
And maybe that is why the body refuses to forget it.
Not the person exactly.
The atmosphere of them. The warmth left behind in certain rooms. The way silence changed when they entered it. The unbearable intimacy of standing too close while pretending not to notice.
And even now, years or hours or lifetimes later something remains.
Like the ghost of ambergris still clinging faintly to a collar or the wrist of someone passing too near—warm and mineral and devastatingly human.
The kind of scent that makes the body remember before the mind has time to defend itself.
Ambergris
Too late to ruin a life completely.
Yet somehow still capable of altering the pulse.
Because some connections never become ordinary enough to lose their sensuality.
They remain suspended living softly beneath the skin—where longing becomes indistinguishable from memory.
And perhaps that is why these loves endure.
Not because they lasted.
Because they never fully touched the ground.
Like desire itself trying very hard to remain civilized.
There is something about rain in the late afternoon that makes the heart unable to hide from itself.
Maybe it is the softened light. The sound of water moving through trees and gutters.
But the moment the rain begins, everything returns.
The people we loved. The people we lost. The lives we almost had. The tenderness we still carry despite ourselves.
And suddenly I feel everything.
Every person I have ever loved. Every version of myself that survived loneliness quietly. Every moment tenderness entered my life and left before I was ready.
For one impossible moment they all come back.
My sons as babies asleep against my chest, warm and safe. The sound of laughter moving through a house that once belonged to all of us.
And then the breaking of it.
The slow unbearable fracture of a little family I tried so hard to hold together with my bare hands.
A marriage that looked like a home from the outside but inside felt like disappearing quietly day after day. The exhaustion of surviving inside something that no longer allowed me to fully exist as myself. The terrible guilt of walking away. The terrible necessity of it too.
And sometimes, when it rains like this, I still wonder.
Should I have stayed? Should I have endured a little longer for the sake of my sons, the photographs, the illusion of wholeness?
But deep down I know remaining would have been its own kind of violence.
A slow crime against the self.
And so I left carrying both grief and freedom in the same trembling hands.
Rain brings all of it back.
Quietly.
The way grief actually lives inside the body.
You stand there listening to water move through the darkening afternoon while your phone stays silent beside you and suddenly the weight of being human feels almost unbearable.
Because love after fifty is no longer about fireworks.
It is about tenderness.
Someone remembering you. Someone noticing your exhaustion. Someone asking if you made it home safe in the rain.
And the heartbreaking thing is how little of that most people receive.
Most people are starving for softness while pretending they no longer need it. Most people are carrying invisible loneliness through conversations about ordinary things.
And still
The heart continues reaching.
Even after loss. Even after disappointment. Even after entire lives collapse and rebuild themselves around absence.
The heart remembers warmth and spends the rest of its life searching for it again.
Outside the rain keeps falling steadily and inside every lit room someone is remembering somebody they loved.
Someone gone. Someone distant. Someone they still carry quietly inside them.
And maybe that is why rain hurts so much because for a little while everyone we have ever loved feels close enough to touch again.
you come from a woman from a body that carried you without question, from hands that knew you before you spoke, from a kind of care you never had to ask for
you were held before you understood what holding was, fed before you knew hunger, loved before you knew how to return it
you were soothed when you didn’t understand your own discomfort you were seen before you knew how to be seen, you were answered before you knew how to ask
and then you grow into a world that teaches you distance teaches you how to move forward, how to leave, how to harden, how to forget what it felt like to be kept
and you come back to us as men standing in front of women as if we are something new, something to figure out, something to reach
but we are not new
we are the same place you once lived inside
so why do you do this
why do you stand so close and still not see us
why do you reach without knowing what you’re reaching for
why do you touch without understanding what you’re holding
why do you move through us as if we are surface
not all of you but most of you
and it repeats
the same distance the same absence the same quiet disconnect as if something in you chose forgetting over remembering
because you don’t know us
not the way we feel you before you speak
not the way we notice what you don’t say
not the way we hold what passes through you without you ever stopping to see it
we feel your hesitation your distraction, your presence when it’s real and your absence when it isn’t
we feel when you arrive and when you don’t
and still
we are expected to remain
as if closeness is something that happens just because you are near
but it is not
it is as if you forgot completely what it was like to be known without asking, to be cared for without earning it, to be held without having to arrive
and now you move through us as if we are surface—but we are not
we are still that same quiet place, still able to hold, still able to know
still capable of seeing you in ways you don’t yet —see yourself
but no longer willing to be forgotten while you stand inside us
It came the way certain things do. Without asking, without a plan.
As if something in me had grown tired of remaining hidden.
Nothing here is finished. Nothing has been made whole.
This digital space holds what has shifted, what softened, what could not return to where it once rested.
If there is tenderness, it is small and easily missed.
If there is opening, it is not sudden, only a slow turning toward something.
I am still learning to trust.
There was a time I believed that staying closed was the only way to remain intact.
That if I held myself carefully enough, quietly enough, nothing could reach me that might take more than I was willing to give.
And I became very good at it.
I learned how to remain how to speak, how to move through the world with precision, with control, with a kind of quiet restraint that made everything appear unchanged.
But there is a quiet cost to that kind of living.
You begin to disappear from yourself.
You begin to forget what it feels like to exist without guarding every part of you.
You begin to live as something contained, not something alive.
And somewhere in that without my permission something in me began to resist.
Not loudly.
Not all at once.
Just enough to make it impossible to return to what I was.
And that is where these words come from.
From the place I kept hidden, not because it was empty, but because it was too full.
From a self that has always spoken in images
In petals that refuse their bloom.
In soil that remembers everything.
In light that does not arrive but waits until it is allowed.
My metaphors are not decoration.
They are translation.
They are the closest I can come to saying what I have carried, without breaking it open too quickly.
Without losing what it means to me in the telling.
If you know how to read them.
You will know me.
Not entirely.
But in the places where language hesitates.
Where meaning slips.
Where something is felt before it is understood.
Because . .
That is where I live.
Between what I can say and what I cannot.
Between clarity and concealment.
Between the self I offer.
And the one I keep just out of reach.
Words arrive to me.
And I must place them somewhere, before they begin to weep within me.
They do not come when I am ready.
They come when I am unguarded.
Late, when the world has quieted.
When the hour no longer belongs to anything but what I have kept inside.
Words keep me awake.
They find me in the stillness of 1 a.m.
Insistent, unresolved as if they have been waiting for the moment I can no longer hold them back.
And I write not because I choose to, but because I cannot leave them there.
Unplaced.
Unspoken.
Turning inward until they begin to break me open.
So this . .
All of this.
Is not a narrative.
It is not a resolution.
It is a record of what happens when I allow myself to remain present with what I feel.
Without forcing it into something easier, cleaner, or more complete.
Read this as you would something living.
With patience.
With care, without needing it to become anything other than what it is.
Because I am still here learning how to exist within myself without retreating.
Learning how to stay when every instinct tells me to close.
Learning how to let something be seen without disappearing in the process.
You arrive here not as a beginning—but as something rewritten by its own hands.
Your children have stepped out of your body into their own weather, calling you less, needing you in quieter ways—like a photograph still warm from the sun.
Your parents soften into time, their voices folding, their strength becoming memory while they are still standing.
And you—you are no longer who you were when everything required you.
Now, you require yourself. You move differently—with a kind of knowing that drips slowly from the center of your chest.
This is not loss.
This is space.
A clearing where your name sounds new again.
Your hands—once full of everyone—begin to open, and in that opening something wild and unrestrained begins to breathe.
You are not starting over.
You are rearranging—like light when it realizes it no longer has to prove its brightness.
I have begun to release what was never entrusted to me—not you, not entirely—but the silent labor of sustaining what you leave unfinished.
There is a distinction now—subtle, but irrevocable.
It did not arrive through resolve, but through depletion—through that slow recognition.
That devotion without reciprocity becomes erosion. I no longer extend myself toward you with the same unguarded impulse.
Not because the feeling has diminished—but because it has clarified.
You remain consistent in your inconsistencies—present in fragments, attentive in intervals, returning just enough to ensure nothing dissolves.
And I—I have ceased to assemble meaning from what is partial.
There is a composure in me now that was not there before—not detachment, not absence—but a contained awareness that does not pursue what does not arrive whole.
I have come to understand that what holds substance does not require persuasion, does not depend on endurance, does not ask to be maintained by one.
So I withdraw my effort from what was never equally carried.
Not in resistance, not in finality—but in preservation.
You remain within that familiar distance—accessible, yet never fully offered.
And I remain—but altered. No longer oriented toward you, but returned to my own center of gravity.
There is a stillness here that does not ache—a quiet reordering of where I place my energy, of what I permit to remain unfinished within me.
And in this—without declaration, without urgency—I arrive at a certainty I do not need to speak aloud: what does not meet me in its fullness will no longer hold me in its absence.
Because I have stood in the quiet of this long enough to understand the difference between what is shared and what is endured alone.
And I have endured enough. Not loudly, not visibly—but in the private chambers of a feeling that was never returned with equal weight.
And still—I do not regret you. Not the moments, not the knowing, not even the cost. But I can no longer remain where I am not fully received.
And so—without resistance, without bitterness, without the need to be understood—I release what never chose me in the way I chose it.
And in the quiet that follows, in the space you no longer occupy in the same way—there is something unexpectedly tender: the return of myself. And with that knowing—unforced, undeniable—I remain whole.
This is written from a place of quiet weariness. Where I see clearly and still do not leave, where something remains. Not because it is easy, but because it will not loosen its hold on me. There are moments when it gathers in my chest, so completely I could cry from exhaustion. Not because I do not understand. But because I understand, and remain.
••••••••
When you grow tired.
Understand that I have been standing for some time – within a quiet depletion.
A subtle undoing that gathers without spectacle without witness – without relief.
It accumulates – not from absence – but from the persistence of what remains – from the repeated deferral of what has already taken shape.
In everything – but admission – In moving alongside something undeniable – While denying its rightful form in preserving composure.
While something within me presses with increasing clarity – Against its containment- Against the careful discipline -We impose upon it.
I recognize it – In the measured duration of your nearness – In the deliberate incompleteness.
Leaving me suspended As though finality itself Were a boundary – We are unwilling to cross – As though definition- Would demand more than we are prepared to concede.
And yet – What exists does not diminish – It gathers – It consolidates itself – In the spaces you leave unoccupied – In the quiet disarray – Of my interior world – In the gradual yielding of the structures – I once believed sufficient.
There is no reprieve in this – No restoration. Only a sustained interior tension. Precise. Unarticulated. And yet entirely present.
That neither dissipates. Not resolves into something gentler. It is exacting in its continuity.
It endures without permission. Without confirmation. Without the courtesy of resolution.
And still – I remain within its influence. Not out of uncertainty.
For I – Perceive it with an exactness. That admits no illusion. But because there is within you – A force – I do not readily dismiss.
A quiet insistence – That continues to draw me inward. Despite the fatigue it leaves in its wake.
It is not softness. It is not yearning alone. It is something more exacting.
Something that persists. Even as I grow weary of its lack of conclusion.
Even as I begin to understand – the cost of its continuation. There are moments in which I consider departure – Not as escape – But as preservation.
And yet even in that consideration – I feel its return – Not as urgency.
But as inevitability. And so I persist. Not unaware. Not untouched. Not unaltered. But still unwilling – Or perhaps unable to withdraw from what continues to exist between us with a certainty that requires nothing.
That offers nothing. And yet remains – Unrelinquished – Unresolved – And entirely – Inescapable.
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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