Love does not knock
It is already inside
A bright intrusion
Lodged
Where you thought
You were whole
You feel it first
A certainty
That something in you
Will not stay closed
It does not ask
It opens you
As color deepens
Throughout
Our red bright lives
Made to be
Entered
Altered
To be given
Not in pieces
Not reluctantly
But all at once
Rushed
Iirreversible
Like the way
I made you mine
Rain writes on me
With a thousand
Soft hands
It does not rush
I walk into it
As one
Walks into a memory
Already known
Already trembling
It falls on my mouth
My eyelids
The hollow at my neck
Where even I have hesitated to linger
And still
It stays
As if my body
Were a country it had always intended to discover slowly
As if every drop
Were a vow spoken in water
Knowing me
Not all at once
But completely
Stood inside myself
As one stands in a garden
Already bloomed
Not searching
Not gathering
Only aware
Of the fragrance
There were moments
That brushed against me
Soft as wind through leaves
They did not carry me away
I let it pass
Through the open doors of my senses
Without closing them
Without following
Because I now know
That not everything
Must be held
Some things
Are meant to be felt
And left intact
I remain settled
In my very own skin
Intentional
Unchanged
Somehow
More than myself
Tilt my throat to the sky
As if I belong to the sun
Not to be chosen
Not to be touched
But to be taken
By something
That does not ask
My name
But here
Light arrives
Like a blade
I do not flinch
I let it see me
And my pulse that has carried
Too many unsaid things
I have been quiet
In rooms
That did not deserve me
I have folded myself
Into smaller weather
I do not lower my face
I do not hide
The tender architecture
Of being alive
I built this house so windows could be more than just an opening to escape from
There is a chair that remembers the shape of my spine
A floor that does not demand I stand
Even the silence here is not silence
It hums low
Like a mother
Half awake – watching
Her children sleep
Here – I bring
My hands to my mouth
As if to keep something in
Or to keep the world out
I am not crying
But something has already passed through me
A small
Deliberate brightness
Something I chose
And kept it
Tonight I feel
As if I might spill
But nothing spills
Only a slow return
A gathering of scattered light back into the body
How strange
To be this tired
And still feel something holy
Not joy – not quite
But the absence of noise
That lets joy breathe
I am intact
I repeat this like fact
Like law
Still – something tilts
When you appear inside a sentence
Not wanting
Not waiting
Something closer to being marked without consent
My body notices before I do
A flicker
A tightening
As if a wire had been brushed somewhere beneath the skin
You speak
And it is ordinary
So ordinary it unsettles me
Because nothing in you reaches
Yet something in me answers
I refuse it – a future
I deny it – a shape
Still – it lingers
Not asking
Not leaving
And I
I gather myself around it
Contained
Deliberate
Even this betrays me
And still
We remain only what we say
The End
And still
I am not afraid
I have swallowed
Darker things, than this
I have carried absence
The undertow is not cruel
It is exact
It strips me
Not of love, but of illusion
What remains
Is something harder
Something luminous in its fracture
A pulse that does not ask to be held
A body that does not confuse
Touch with arrival
If you reach for me now
You will not find the me that floated toward you
Like an offering
You will find depth
You will find pressure
You will find a silence
And still
There is heat here
Strange
Feral
Uncharted
The kind that burns
Without flame
The kind that lives
In the center of a woman
Who has learned
How to disappear
Without ever leaving
I am no longer asking to be saved
I am becoming the thing
That survives the drowning
To be continued . .
And I
A chamber of salt and voltage, you flicker at the edge
Not absence, not presence, just a disturbance, in the surface of things
Your voice, a thin wire that fails to conduct
I have outgrown the need to translate you
See how I stand now
Unspooling light from my own marrow
No more orbit
No more leaning
Even the stars burn cleaner here
Without your gravity
Go
Become rumor
Become distance
Become nothing I must answer
I remain exact
Electric
Entirely my own
To be continued . .
I come here
Observe myself
From the inside
There’s a sea in there
Influenced by shooting stars
With enough spark
To resist your charm
In this reality
You become a bird
That speaks in maritime
To be continued . .
and now
it settles
not gone
not ever that
i feel it still
in the quiet parts of me
where things don’t ask
to be explained
it isn’t soft
no
it has teeth
it knows how to stay
without asking permission
and i
i let it
i don’t reach for you
that would be too easy
too human
and this
this – is something else
something that doesn’t beg
doesn’t promise
doesn’t belong
it just exists
between that space
where nothing is said
and everything is understood
i could pull it closer
i could burn it out
but both would ruin it
so i leave it
untouched
unnamed
alive
because there is a kind of love
that doesn’t need a future
to prove
it happened
and a kind of hunger
that learns
to live
without being fed
and still
it stays
not louder
not weaker
just deeper
like something
that chose
to become
part of me
The End
and still
light does not leave
it settles
low- under the skin
i move through rooms
as if carrying a second sun
hidden but insistent
everything touches it
water
glass
my own hands
and i feel it
something
that asks to be kept
even in absence
even in the long
unlit hours
you are not here
and still
something of you
circulates
not memory
something warmer
more exact
like heat
trapped in stone
after the day is gone
i try to name it
but language fails
it always fails
so i do not name it
i carry it
this quiet
this gold
this undoing
until my shadow
begins to burn in glow
To be continued . .
i did not fall into you
i opened
like a wound that recognized
its own knife
you arrived quietly
no thunder – no claim
and still
everything in me
shifted its allegiance
i was whole before you
i tell myself this
like a prayer that doesn’t hold
yet now
there is a before
that feels uninhabited
you touch so little
and still
i am rearranged
light does this
it enters and suddenly
the room remembers its dust
you stand in me
like something uninvited
and necessary
and i
i become
terribly available to absence
you leave
this is your gift
this is your violence
to exist in me without weight
to burn without flame
tell me
what is this
that asks nothing
and takes
everything
i do not call it love
love is too small
too human
too forgivable
this is something
that survives
even when
you are not here
and i
i remain
lit
and ruined
by it
To be continued . .
I was a quiet landscape before you
A single purposed bird
Illimitably moving
Towards – color
A consciousness
Where nothing is taken
Nothing is given
And still the earth opens
As if it cannot bear to remain one
I loved you here
Long after the sun withdrew its hand
Today
My heart
Lost its rhythm for a moment
Not like fear
Not like pain
Like a bird forgetting the pattern of its wings mid-flight
Startled by the sudden awareness of the sky
I told you, just that
And you
You did not question the sky
You became it
You held me
The way gravity holds the earth
Without force
Without permission
Without asking if it should
And my body
Which had been speaking in fragments
Fell back into a language
Older than thought
But you
You do not stay
You are not made of staying
You are like tide
Like wind
Like something
That belongs to movement
And I
I do not ask
The ocean
To become a shore
I have learned
What it is to live
Without arrival
I am not unsure
Of what I feel
Only of where to place it
It lingers
Like morning
Through an open window
Resting on me
Softly warming
What I thought
Had settled
But never staying long enough
To belong
You are
Easy as breath
Something I don’t notice
Until you’re gone
And then
Everything feels
Just a little heavier
There is something
Between us
It finds me
Without asking
Pulls me closer
And then returns
To where it must
Leaving behind
The feeling
Of having been near
I don’t name it
I wouldn’t know
What to call something that lives
In the spaces
Between your words
Between your pauses
And what you take back
I feel it
In the way
You look at me
Like you see me
And then
Like you remember
You shouldn’t
I do not reach
Not because
I don’t want to
But because I understand
Some things
Are not meant
To be held
Only Felt
So I stay
In the quiet
You leave behind
In the space
That is never empty
Just unclaimed
And I watch
How you return
Without arriving
How you stay
Without staying
And still
Something in me
Moves toward you
Without moving at all
And somehow
That is enough
Like reflections on water shimmering
Just out of reach
Something I can see
But never gather
Something that exist
As long as I don’t try
To make it mine
And still
I stand here
Letting it touch me
Learning the shape of a feeling
That asks for nothing
And gives everything
Quietly
Without promise
Without future
Without a name
Just this
And me
Standing in it
Until it fades
Like the end of a day
Soft
Certain
And gone
There is no space
Between us
My respiration
Zigzags
Every breath
Your bed takes
In this capacity
Blood – blazes
Knowing
I’ve been burned
Many times before
But with you
I am less contained
The suddenness
Of your hands
Intertwined with mine
Fails – to open
While our shadows
Become identical
In a synchronous rhyme
Took my first steps
On this corridor
Unleveled earthiness
Saw myself reflected
In a rush of energy
Becoming self aware
That I had just met my soul
It kissed my forehead
From birth to forever
With only God in between
Punctually swallowing
All of my blues
With such artistry
That when I glance at my children
I do it
With eyes closed
Because I too
Saw my life
Pointing back at me
SUN: Sit and Listen
“I stride to be
More useful than your words
In my absence
Loneliness comes
Are you still afraid of the dark
You connoisseur of light
Join me, let’s take
A snapshot of God
Air here is eternity
Inexplicable gravitation
Because here you don’t need a pen”
Truth
Without mercy
Has no sound
It lives
With circumstance
In this exactitude
I softly land
And I like it
Adds warmth
To my being
Coldness here
Does not exist
I am free
As you startle
All of my senses
Thoughts
And
Its dispersiveness
Establish
No boundaries
In me
Some, go on paper
Some, sit on high grass
Delighted and pure
Some, say your name
Thirsty and untuned
Some, become satisfied
As nude to touch
Some, survive in a sphincter
Regulated and relaxed
Some, become butterflies
Hoping to awake like someone else
Some, stand in old age
Identical to yesterdays
Some, close their eyes
As briefness outlines their fate
Some, become trees
Scattered in time
Some, multiply when it rains
Measuring drops as faith
Some, exist in you
More secretly and afraid
Some, in darkness
Half lit decades
Of a young self
Some, become some
As all of these thoughts
Can only be shared
With
Who reads me
Nothing has been spoken
Yet – it is loud
These feelings
Exist in a poem
Ink, and its elegance
Place arrows
On the palm of my hands
Metaphors that rise
With every consonant
A corresponding rhyme
That illustrates and loves
Gestational verbs
Is what we have
You measure love in weeks
While I hover
Like an aerialist
Over your skin
This equilibrium
Has turned sentences to lust
Leaving – me – ropeless
In this ballet of anesthetics
The bravery of your words
Interrogates my soul
Exacting – for sure
As braille to fingertips
Tracing paradoxes
Grammatically intoxicating – you
Half bright
This in between
Keeps me awake
As if all I ever wanted
Suddenly – was
No longer distant
Safe space to rest my head
A parenthesis made of rain
Irreducible amounts
In this immensity
Impossible
Becomes possible
Exquisitely
Like a rising sun
And it’s imperialcy
Poetry speaks to me
In a language
Made of bells
It engulfs me
In hues of pink
Making shadows of myself
Thousands and thousands of times
In this totality
I find you
Over and over again
Because it is you
I want
Night winds
Startles my roof
Such a ripeness
In season
Generations of birds
Tucked between branches
Feels like
I am – in
Nineteen eighty five
Everyone was home
There is familiarity
In your words
Much like a beating heart
Its synchronicities
Valves, through me
So graciously
These events
Over everything
Feels chronic
How do . . I
Reach out
Without these metaphors
Perhaps
You already know
And smiling
From a distance
Nodding to this energy
I have been
A fire
A cornerstone
Inside your mind
Easier to cry
When you’re not around
Because, loving you
Requieres a soft space
On the opposite side of my bed
You asked
If I ever sleep
I – do
My mind circles
In – rəˈzôlv
This dazzling dark
And its allegories
Live above these lines
You watch me
And my insufficiencies
When it comes to love
And that is okay
Because without it
I would not be
Myself
Does God have a voice
Does it speak in flowers
Must be magical
In a desire no less luminance’d
Than a birthing womb
A miraculous fortress
With no sounds or wounds
Resolute and most bright
-Motherhood
When I struggle
With your absence
You call me
My stomach beats
A thousand marches
Aches to be so many miles away
If I had no sight
I could find you both
In the greatest of multitudes
This haptic perception
Reminds me
That light
Is sufficient
If you dare to see it
You come to me
With hands
Made of rain
Annunciatively
Whispering my name
In this adverbial space
I become
Ever so nervous
Forever’ly
I swear
We’re not alike
I am – paused
You – straight’shooter
Fracturing the curvature of my spine
If you’re going to love me
Love me – well
Victoring these days
That feel like nights
Resurrected
By one giant sky
Mirrors are like mouths
In this anarchy of metaphors
I thrive
If you’re reading this
Every ounce of truth
Lives from left to right
Like a vowel beehived in eternity
Sometimes
Brightness
Feels
Disfigured
Shinning
So innocently
While I stand
In what feels like salt water
Sulfured, perhaps
Honed by your touch
Skeptical, by your embrace
Because in this clarity
I’ve figured out
You’re just wrong
For me
The air feels golden
Immaculate matter
High enough
For birds to fly
Flickering flight
Minimal effort
With every rise
I have
Loved
You
Here
– Scintillating
One word at a time
Spoken in the dark
Points with wit
Incendiary like us
And in this night’gold
Love reveals in verse
Divided where sun is most
Exigently, my love
Doors between us
You tell me
Be careful with my head
These ambitious thoughts
Must hide them
Like contraband
In this reverent space
I greet you
Making myself
An immediate cautery
Instead of shaking your hand
Dry fasting
Is discipline
Day 3 to 7
Were diabolical
Cried a decade
Worth of tears
And with that
Sleep reached REM
Vivacious colors
Thankful for those milliseconds
The dead never looked so alive, rosy cheeked
With an exuberant amount of health
-Dad
Today feels loud
Soundless energy
Birds stopped singing
As if they know
Something we don’t
You tell me
I won’t be alone
Note how rooted
This situation feels
It hurts like hell
Drowning in puddles
When you promised
You’d always keep me afloat
My skull
A spy
Must admit
That tomorrow
I will do this again
It has power over me
Like war itself
In this patriotism
Of self reflection
I am lucky enough
To have a glimpse
Of my heart
Its two hands, grasping
What feels like love
The day my mother married
Hers, weeped
Futurity of leaving Cuba, gone
She grieved her only child
All efforts to bring her home, futile
Through the years
And under a fleet of angels
I saw myself
Reflected in her
Superbly waiting for motherhood
Incessant fire, love that burns
Like a tower, in me
Time spent
In this commercial space
Immeasurable
Nights, days, collide
Growing this business
Has left many gaps in this blog
Months, years of silence
Yet, words collide
Meeting me in disbelief
And in this mutuality
I break my fast
Before dawn
Your less•ness
Was more
Gazing at you
Felt elegant
Over mirrors
While you traced
Curvatures of my faith
Christ, hanging over us
More preciser than light
And yet, you took me
Through a straight line
Inviting flames to our bed
Sparks to invisible
For poetry to withstand
I see • you
Bringing rain
To my hands
Like a plant • waits
To become • a tree
Who am • I
To • you
In this whole earth
Equating love
For leaves
You
Seek me
Like a myth
Your hands
Fallen stars
Made up of punctuations
Leaving me
Speechless
With no reason
To wait
In this
Inflectional morpheme
You call, love
I am
Foolishly
Fragranced
By the way
You made me feel
Sir, you leaned
Bursting open
All my wounds
It must’ve been
Your wisdom
With women, like me
Mounted on brows of men, like you
Epitomizing, secrets over strength
Familiarity
And wants
In this existence
Just, lives here
Digitally tucked
In a forever
In this valiancy
And under
An extremest sun
I squint
Seeking
God’s own words
Instead of my own
How wondrous of me
Desiring to be
No less than
A cover of a poem
As much as I
Perceive the future
Its architecture
Comes to me
Most purest, splendid
Comparable to a womb
Shining down
From heaven
But in this present
I witness
And swear
Our brevity
Is a rigorous rhodium
Uttering love
God made you
Out of a clay
One granule
After another
Exquisite
Reversed
Intelligence
It is possible
We loved
While strolling
Upside down
Indeed, we have
I have observed you
Light suited saluting
A formidable crest
Please, hush now
Here comes silence
In this bright applause
-Man
I think of color
Conte technique
Over this pillow
I shade pebbles
Greater than your hands
Scattering through debris of seeds
In a place with so few trees
Hearing your echo intertwined with mine
What is ‘this’ passion
If you can’t meet me halfway
Sometimes
You feel like a void
That I follow
Without following you
A portraiture
The tonality
Of a single text
You make my flame slow
It’s not what I give that smokes
To draw what we both can’t kill
In this mackerel atmosphere
I love you
Down tidily
Waist deep
Men like you
More absolute
A general liberty to sting
My dad would always tell me, repeatedly.
‘You don’t pick the wrong men, they pick you’
This always resonates when finding myself in that sort of situation.
I’m quite imperfect couldn’t keep a marriage, not for lack of trying.
Tried to give my sons the illusion of balance. That didn’t last, it was soul crushing.
My sons are now grown men, and have a clear understanding of my side of the story.
Yes, there are two sides.
A high percentage of women leave – to live – not to be with someone else.
I’ve lived, loved, and raised two men.
Empty nest, feels loud.
Their happiness and relationships, validates all efforts.
My first ink experience was 26 years ago.
Will never forget my parent’s faces, over a tiny butterfly on ankle.
Dad would say ‘do you want to be a walking newspaper’
After 18 months of metastatic cancer and home hospice he parted to a dimension of familiarity, lush greenery filling his lungs with oxygen.
I grieved, and edited every square inch of my arm, as my mental health spiraled.
At times I regret the crowdedness of colors.
A tabloid – I suppose.
Unsure if it’s maturity
But when someone speaks to me
As if they know me
And make assumptions
About my character
My ears quit working
I go numb, blank
I have mastered it
They walk away
Because in that instant
Im just dead inside
When I cannot believe
You bring
A pair of knees
To my prayers
One clanking bell
Sounds of certainty
Missing you –
Is like a transverse ache
Dull, penetrating my right side
Fiercely, loving you
Twelve years was apparently enough
For others to never mention your name
Find me in my dreams
So I don’t forget the angles of your face
familial • ashes
surrounding its coast
superb • is to forget
because •
in this • geology
anonymity is defeated
by flamboyant royals
their vast sweeping branches
its flowering habit
embracing an entire island
that has lost all hope
– Cuba 2026
At dusk
I become
Part of him
Quietly placing
Dishes in suitcases
Light yellow
Leather tones
Such a sense of grief
When you cover my eyes
And show me
The inside of your world
Fresh footed staircase
Spiraling sideways
Onto the longest corridor
Linear shadows
Of a once lived home
I am not indifferent
To your pain
I too
Have traveled
On this road
How delicately you swallow
Swear this is true
The air in this room
Becomes a yes
For I have no reason to say no
Were flesh was involved
The fire you create
Keeps me up at night
Suspended, perhaps
In this tonality
My soul, alone
Fears reciprocity
I am a – faithfullest
We can’t be friends
Intimacy too lit
Feels like an infidel
In this physiology
I am no longer
The protagonist
It’s you, your heart
It’s pulsing valves
Such regurgitation
For a man, like you
Dilutes memories
Like light, steadfast
And sufficient
When I dare to see
I ache in a dwelling
That’s too proud
For love . .
Lustful is unlikely
Traces of your skin
Lingers my hands
We have flown
In this structural paradise
Seeking light
Out of storms
i pass by
the oldest
mountain
denying
every stain
of rain
i should have resolved
the tactics of my faith
I feel safe
In his space
It’s hiving here
Buzzing latitudes
Bewildered, by
His skilled heart
Endless design
Circling me
Like an ellipse
In this parameter
We make a little house
Overburdened with joy
Splendor
And truth, alone
Rings more in me
My thighs become
Weak, invisible
And with this wonder
Spring soars in me
Truth
Has
No
Season
When
It
Comes
To
Us
Sir
How
Do
You
Sleep
Without me
Our chemistry
In this velocity
Like ether
Over me
Orbits of grace
At the in’s of me
Right here
I fall
110
Times a day
Like something
That still glows
Tucked, under
A single address
My land of traumas
Heightened with fear
A place that holds
My childhood
So terrifyingly
Deciphering torment
And the inability
To seek help
From people
Who watch you
Fall, in less dirt
Painful terrains
This is Cuba – 1979
Martyrs of disguise
Making parenthood
Less fiable
As everyone
Is too busy
Surviving
Their
Own
Imprisonment
I’ve been
A lonely walker
For decades
This life
Has taught me
To believe
That above my name
There is a vacancy
A beautiful sky
With blue lips
That speak for me
Making peace
For the rest
Of my existence
Like a road
That is long
Yet spangled
you, in the flesh
(i) – in glass
too much exactitude
for my soul to hide
that you’ve lived
– in my ribs
on your own terms
silently wanting me
while (i) felt nothing
But – no’s
you, in the flesh
i – no longer in glass
If time is love
How many corners
In a heart
That is burning
In entanglement
Too deep
Too loyal
To ever be
Afraid
Of you
you hang
your darkness
on high trees
while I stand
in enough water
for fish to survive
I am
Unsure
Of what I feel
You taught me
Strength
The
Unimaginable
Kind
Circumstance
Brings me here
A place where I can
Hang my words
And, my unraveling
Thoughts of you . .
Jan 26, 2026
A subtle lullaby
Bronzed
As the earth rotates
Such wonder
Touching a vain
Girl’s heart. . .
I once knew
How light was spent
Its trickling effects
As faith pointed
With a golden rod
My own despair
Sat in a womb of fear
Aware it was not science
My conscious inadvertently
Reversed millions of words
Narrowing it down to one
-God
Heavy lines
Mounted over me
These purple nights
Drowning super stars
Forgetting what it is to write
Phosphorus dynamite
Encircles and intertwines
Muting one decade at a time
My youngest flowers
Hem above the heavens
In unparalleled storms
As God landscapes
An elegy for the unborn
Stone COLD
Hold ON
You’re still STRONG
NERVE pain loneliness
I haven’t LEARNED anything
EXCEPT for the LINES across your FACE
MORE human, than YESTERDAY
Knocking darkness
Out of nights
Even in these shadows
Truthfully speaking
I prefer daylight
The hardest
I am adapting
Cowardly, but adapting
This is distinction
Between surviving
And existence
My mercy
A need to substitute
My mouth, for a dream
Different homes
Pincushions for doorknobs
Damnit I love you
One must be blind
Stripping God of its own light
Things none of us could be
The profound luster in lines
It’s happening to me
A wound, too echo’d to reveal
That love is not found in days
Fight for insight
God’s copyright
In this interior of light
My signature becomes
A wrath that requires no reason
Forgot
How still
Your mind is
This is not
A compliment
It’s rhetoric,
It chokes
The good parts of me
Covers us in blue
In the instant
Of this instant
Memory invents
Another present
A circular courtyard
With superstitious
Flashes of light
Intended to cover
Every crack in our horizon
The eternities of a second
My whole life to solve
Pitiless searches for a body
To grow old with
Nameless sensations
Such a cruel thing
To miss the dead
With this immeasurable clarity
Like gravid drops of hope
Spinning over itself
Tirelessly, till we learn
How to love, again . .
The furthest of reaches
Sex seal serpentines
These syllogisms
Transform me
Inside is outside
It is everywhere
And nowhere
Invented
Devoured
– Man
We live in identical rooms
We blankly wake, we greet
From one balcony to another
Successively for a hundred years
Between now and tomorrow
We will spend the rest of our days
Growing gardens out of angry stars
Immune to mine
Interiors of gray matter
Granular minerals
Sleepy-colors
Obsolete to some
– Love
Love clamps itself
Leaving small gaps
With just enough spaces
Allowing you to taste
Your very own tongue
There’s no such thing
As neatness
When it comes
To our minds
I breath
You flicker
Incalculable
Of course . .
the world spins
ready to loose, and peel
comparable to a star
proudly moving through water
there is no equal
more beautiful
than her roseness at my feet
i admit here, i seek shelter
a shelter of brightness
when most of my most, is dark
cross high and unstrange
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
You must be logged in to post a comment.