Sometimes I am tired of being me.
I have been with myself
for as long as I can remember,
and I have never learned
how to leave myself alone.
I notice everything.
A change in someone’s voice.
A silence that lasts too long.
Something I said three days ago
that no one else remembers.
I return to things
that have already ended
as though there might be something there
I missed the first time.
There usually is.
That is part of the problem.
I have made myself uncomfortable
for as long as I can remember.
I don’t know when I began
watching myself this closely.
I am tired of my own reflection,
not because I hate the woman in it,
but because I never simply let her exist.
I am always doing something to her.
Fixing.
Forgiving.
Remembering.
Reconsidering.
Even inside my own body,
I move the furniture.
I turn her face toward the light
and then away from it.
I look too closely.
At my face.
My body.
My age.
The things I should have done differently.
The people I should have stopped missing
a long time ago.
Nothing in me
is ever allowed to simply be.
Not even happiness.
I examine that too.
How long will it last?
What will ruin it?
Who will leave?
I ask too much of her.
Be younger.
Be wiser.
Be less afraid.
Stop missing people
who can live without you.
Stop needing answers
from people who have chosen silence.
Stop going back
to the exact place something hurt
just to see if it still does.
It does.
I go back anyway.
Sometimes I wonder
when I became someone
I was responsible for correcting.
When did I stop being a person
and become a problem
I was always trying to solve?
She has carried every version of me
without ever being allowed
to put one down.
And still,
I stand in front of her
looking for what needs fixing.
She must be exhausted.
I know I am.
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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