Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Category: Art

  • Stayed Behind

    I know he is not my forever

    It took me until tonight
    to understand that

    And strangely

    it was not grief I felt

    It was peace

    Maybe because
    I have been preparing
    for this
    my entire life

    First a country

    I left it once
    and it never stopped
    leaving me

    Then my father

    I thought the earth
    might have the decency
    to pause for a moment

    It didn’t

    Then the years
    when my sons
    still reached for my hand

    At some point
    you understand

    that loving something

    and keeping it

    are two entirely different miracles

    The other day
    I found one long
    bright strand of my hair
    resting against his shirt

    I reached for it

    He looked down
    and softly said

    be careful with that

    I have carried those words
    around ever since

    Because for one impossible second

    it seemed to me

    that it was not the hair at all

    It was some quiet part of myself

    the daughter

    the mother

    the woman who survived
    all those leavings

    that had crossed the distance
    between two people

    and chosen

    without asking me

    to remain

    I know he is not my forever

    But I think tonight
    I finally understood

    that forever

    was never the thing
    I was looking for

    I think

    I only wanted proof

    that after losing

    a country

    a father

    and the years
    when my sons
    still reached for my hand

    there was still
    some living part of me

    capable

    of leaving itself

    behind

  • Two of You

    There must be two of you.

    The discovery arrived this evening with such certainty that I nearly laughed. Not because it surprised me. Because it explained so much.

    For months I had been under the mistaken impression that I was speaking to only one man.

    Meanwhile, an entire second population appeared to be living inside him.

    One of them leaves fingerprints on the soul.

    The other continues through the day.

    One enters a room carrying enough electricity to alter the arrangement of furniture.

    The other returns home without a trace of ash.

    Both seem equally convinced of their authenticity.

    At 8:46 p.m.

    I placed my head out the window and watched darkness collect itself in the trees.

    The wind carrying the scent of rain that had fallen elsewhere, and I found myself wondering whether the two of you know each other.

    Whether one sends letters to the other.

    Whether they pass each other in narrow hallways.

    Whether one ever pauses at the sound of the other’s footsteps.

    I hope they do.

    I hope they sit together and exchange stories.

    Otherwise —

    I cannot imagine the loneliness.

    And for the first time it occurred to me that perhaps I had been mistaken.

    There are not two versions of you.

    There are simply two men sharing the same address.

    One arrives carrying fire.

    The other arrives Tuesday.

    And suddenly the mystery was no longer how they existed.

    The mystery was how they survived each other.

    How they shared the same life.

    How one biography contained them both.

    I felt tired suddenly.

    Not for myself.

    For them.

    And then for you.

    Because I have spent my entire life being only one person.

    Which is exhausting enough.

    The wind moved through the trees.

    And I wondered if the man who stood in my house ever misses the other one.

    If, on certain evenings he catches sight of him crossing the distance.

    A familiar silhouette.

    A shadow carrying fire.

    Gone before he can call out.

    Perhaps that is why I have always felt a tenderness for birds.

    They leave.

    But they leave whole.

    The wing does not migrate separately from the sky.

    The song does not arrive three days after the bird.

    Nothing is divided.

    Nothing remains behind to haunt the trees.

    And there, with my head resting in the open night, I arrived at a thought so gentle it almost escaped me.

    Tonight I felt tired for you.

    Not because I finally understood you.

    Quite the opposite.

    Because I realized both men were real.

    And somehow, beneath the same name, behind the same eyes, inside the same life, they continue forward together.

    Otherwise—

    I cannot imagine the loneliness.

  • Fatherlight

    Your face was not a face

    It was morning itself

    The kind of morning
    that arrives before grief

    Before the knowledge
    that fathers can die

    I kept trying to look at you

    But the light was too bright

    As though love
    after all these years
    had finally become visible

    And then you held me

    The way fathers hold daughters
    when there is nothing left to explain

    No language

    No questions

    No unfinished sorrow

    Only the certainty
    of your arms around me

    I woke hours ago

    Yet something remains

    The light has followed me
    into this afternoon

    It rests quietly
    over everything

    Over the silence

    Over the ache

    Over this ordinary day
    unfolding exactly as days do

    The room is ordinary

    The world is ordinary

    But I am not entirely here

    Some part of me
    is still standing
    inside that light

    Still breathing
    the scent of starch
    from your shirt

    Still trying to look at you

    Still closing my eyes
    against that unbearable brightness

    Still your daughter

    And for the first time
    in a very long time

    the silence does not feel empty

    It feels illuminated

  • The Plumage of Joy

    Wounds rarely arrive looking like wounds

    They arrive wearing the plumage of joy

    Bright-throated

    Beautiful

    Perched innocently upon the branch as though they have always belonged there

    They sing

    And because the song is lovely

    The bird draws nearer

    Because the song is lovely

    The bird forgets caution

    Because the song is lovely

    The bird opens its wings

    Who fears a beautiful bird?

    Who closes the gate against a creature singing?

    Who suspects that something so luminous might one day be found nesting among the ribs?

    By the time I understood

    It had already learned my name

    The Plumage of Joy
    Graphite – Charcoal

    It took me days to draw the bird

    At first its face was wrong

    The beak distorted

    The proportions impossible

    I erased and erased until the paper began carrying its own ghosts

    Something kept resisting recognition

    Now I know what it was

    I was drawing the wound

    Not the wound itself

    But the creature carrying it

    The tears came long before the drawing was finished

    They arrived quietly then settled over everything

    Every memory darkened beneath them

    Every kindness grew wings

    Every ordinary afternoon became a migration

    Even the smallest moments changed shape

    A glance became an omen

    A silence became a continent

    The tears landed everywhere

    And afterward nothing remained innocent

    That is what grief does

    The Plumage of Joy

    It stains

    It places its thumbprint upon every remembered thing until the past begins glowing from within

    And I am tired

    Not from loving

    From carrying an entire sky

    From waking each morning with the feeling that something inside me has been left uncovered

    I am the bird

    Not because I am fragile

    Because birds protect the breastbone

    The soft place

    The living place

    The place closest to the heart

    Yet somehow I lifted my wings and showed it anyway

    And now the ribs remain open

    The rain enters

    The moon enters

    The silence enters

    Everything enters

    I am not the same woman

    I can feel her leaving

    The woman who mistook safety for permanence

    The woman who believed the sky lived above her instead of inside her

    I watch her recede

    The way a shoreline recedes from a departing ship

    Beautiful

    Familiar

    Unreachable

    And here I remain

    Simply unable to return to the creature I was before the tears taught every memory how to bleed light

    The Plumage of Joy

  • Captivity

    I am not obsessed with birds

    It is worse than that

    I watch them because somewhere
    inside their suspended bodies
    I keep seeing myself

    And perhaps
    that is why I keep watching them

    Not to study them

    To capture them in stillness long enough
    to understand
    what in me
    continues surviving this way

    Because what devastates me most
    is how beautiful their endangerment is

    How every living thing
    appears most holy
    at the exact moment
    it could disappear

    There are birds
    who damage themselves quietly

    Not from storms

    From devotion

    In captivity some begin feather-plucking

    Small repeated griefs
    where the body
    unable to escape its own longing
    turns inward against itself

    The beak returns
    again and again
    to the same tender place

    Chest
    Wing
    Breastbone

    Until the aviary floor
    becomes covered
    in the evidence of attachment

    I understand that now

    How the soul
    when unable to fly freely
    toward what it loves
    sometimes begins consuming itself instead

    And still
    the bird continues singing

    That is the part
    that ruins me

    Not the wound

    The devotion surviving beneath it

    The instinct to keep returning
    to the very place
    where the heart exhausts itself

    Because birds are creatures of imprinting

    Once attachment enters the nervous system
    the body remembers

    Migration paths
    Familiar calls at dusk
    The exact direction
    of returning

    And what is longing
    if not the body
    trying to migrate back
    to the place
    it believes warmth once lived?

    Meanwhile
    my dignity survives quietly
    inside the attachment

    like a woman standing perfectly still
    inside rising water
    hoping no one notices
    how hard she is fighting
    to keep breathing

    Still graceful
    Still composed
    Still answering softly
    while entire oceans
    move beneath the skin

    Some evenings
    I watch the birds crossing
    the darkening sky
    and feel something inside me
    recognize itself in them completely

    Not freedom

    But suspension

    The beauty of remaining airborne while exhaustion slowly enters the wings

    And perhaps
    that is what devotion truly is

    Not love at its beginning

    But love after it realizes
    the light may never stay
    and continues flying toward it anyway

  • Dignity lives here

    My dignity lives here

    In the first image
    where everything is still charcoal and restraint

    Where the bird is almost disappearing
    into all that white silence
    pulling something dark and endless
    from the center of itself
    as though love
    had entered the body quietly
    and forgotten how to leave

    That was the beginning

    The sacred stage of longing

    The stage where silence
    still felt noble

    Where I believed
    if I carried my ache beautifully enough
    it might become survivable

    So I answered softly
    Smiled softly
    Learned how to make a home
    out of fragments

    A lingering hand
    A familiar voice at dusk

    The unbearable tenderness
    of someone leaving slowly
    because part of them
    does not wish to go

    And I never asked
    the impossible question

    Stay . .

    Charcoal | Watercolor

    Then came the color

    The bruising

    Blue for all the sorrow
    I folded inward
    so no one would have to witness it

    Red for every part of me
    that continued loving
    even after understanding
    love alone
    cannot keep a person near

    And suddenly
    the longing was no longer contained

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    Charcoal | Watercolor 

    It spread through everything

    Through the wings
    Through the throat
    Through the hollow cathedral
    of the chest
    where attachment had already begun
    lighting its candles

    That is what these images are, I think

    The progression
    of a soul trying to preserve its dignity
    while quietly drowning in devotion

    At first
    the suffering is elegant

    Almost holy

    But grief is alive

    And living things
    eventually bleed through

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    Charcoal | Watercolor 

    So the bird darkens
    The colors deepen
    The silence grows teeth

    Until one day
    even dignity itself
    begins fighting for oxygen
    inside the attachment

    And still

    The bird continues singing

    That is the part
    that dismantles me

    Not that it is wounded

    But that it continues loving
    while wounded

    Continues turning its small trembling body
    toward warmth
    even after realizing
    the light is already leaving

    Some nights
    I want to tear myself free from it completely

    To become a bird myself

    To split open the evening
    with all the things
    human dignity will not let me say

    To fly blindly into the dark
    Rather than remain here
    composed
    while my soul floods quietly beneath me

    Because I cannot remember
    ever loving like this before

    Not with this much ache

    Not with this much silence

    Not with this terrible instinct
    to preserve grace
    while the heart is collapsing

    And perhaps
    that is the saddest thing
    about being human

    how we continue singing
    long after we understand
    no one is coming
    to save us
    from our own devotion

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    charcoal | watercolor

  • Curvature

    At night
    my body becomes aware of you
    the way the sea
    becomes aware of the moon

    Slowly

    Then all at once

    The windows are open
    Rain moves somewhere beyond the trees
    The room smells faintly of oil
    warm cotton
    jasmine dying softly in a glass

    And my skin

    My skin remembers your hands
    with a devotion
    that frightens me

    The way you touched my waist
    as though holding something
    both sacred
    and dangerous

    The restraint of you

    Not taking
    Not claiming

    Only resting your hand there briefly
    while my entire body
    opened beneath the silence of it

    A woman can survive many things

    Loneliness
    Distance
    Even absence

    But gentleness
    gentleness enters the body
    and rearranges it

  • Roofline: Weatherproof

    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

    It was about to become
    her native language

  • Roofline

    Some nights
    I want to live on the roof

    Not visit it
    Not escape to it briefly

    Live there

    Make a small religion
    out of shingles and weather

    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

  • Graphited Harbor

    There are men
    who will never say

    I miss you

    Instead they ask

    Are you home?
    Did you eat?

    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

    Charcoal Dust
    Dusted Graphite

    Sleeplessness | unfinished feeling

  • Preface of a Harbor

    A woman facing water

    Preface of a Harbor | Charcoal

    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

  • Harbor

    Harbor | Charcoal

    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

    To be continued

  • Wooden Box

    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

  • Cageless

    I no longer dream
    of extraordinary things

    Not anymore

    Becoming . .
    “Bruised Peaches & Old Paintings”

    I dream of a quiet kitchen at dawn

    I dream of open windows
    A slow walk at dusk
    beneath a sky turning the color
    of bruised peaches and old paintings

    Watercolor | Charcoal

    I want less noise now
    Less performance
    Less of this endless human habit
    of proving we are worthy of being loved

    What I want now is simple
    and therefore sacred

    A sink full of dishes after dinner

    The soft weight of my sleeping cats in sunlight

    Music drifting through the house at midnight

    And love
    if it finds me again
    must arrive gently

    No grasping hands
    No crowded silences
    No love that mistakes possession for intimacy

    I want someone calm enough
    to sit beside my quiet
    without trying to translate it

    Someone who understands
    that my space

    my art, my time
    the invisible interior life of me, has always been cageless

    Not distant
    Not cold

    Simply alive in quiet ways

    Like birds disappearing into evening trees

    Like moonlight moving freely across the floor

    Like poems arriving at 2 a.m.
    asking for nothing except room to breathe

    Because after all these years
    I think love should feel less like fire
    and more like light from another room

    soft, steady, enduring

    the kind that lets you remain fully yourself
    while never letting you forget
    you are deeply—gently
    not alone

  • Ambergris

    Too late to ruin a life completely.

    Ambergris

    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.

    Ambergris

  • Tired

    I am tired in the way a city is tired
    after sirens have dragged themselves through every artery of it

    I am tired in the shoulders of women who carry invisible ledgers—who balance grief with groceries

    I am tired of being the room that holds men who do not live in it

    I am tired of almost

    tired of being almost chosen
    almost held
    almost enough

    do you know what that does
    to a woman who has already given
    all the versions of herself
    she once promised she would protect

    it teaches her
    how to disappear
    politely

    I am tired of the strange holiness of contradiction
    how a man can bow his head to God
    and lift his hands to me
    without ever saying my name out loud

    I am tired of swallowing the moment

    I am so tired

    tired enough to finally admit
    that I have been generous
    where I should have been guarded

    open
    where I should have been still

    So — tonight

    I will take back my hands
    from where they reached too far

  • already yours

    there is a bird in the hinge

    you know it

    in the moment you almost choose yourself and don’t

    I kept mine quiet, called it strength

    it wasn’t —just

    fear, well-behaved

    it learned my breath, waited, pressed

    until I felt it

    so here—take him

    and know—color is effortless the moment you stop holding it back

  • The Hinge

    i saw myself
    standing in the grocery line of my own life

    hands full of things
    i did not choose

    no one tells you
    how quietly it happens

    how you keep saying yes
    until your hands forget
    what no —feels like

    i watched myself swallow it—a bird

    not the kind they print on curtains

    but the ragged one
    ink-splattered
    off balance

    with a wing
    that can’t decide
    if it is breaking
    or beginning

    i say bird
    you say anxiety
    the doctor says reflux
    my mother says pray

    my body says:
    listen

    behind the sternum
    that almost-ache
    that isn’t pain

    that drop in the gut, that sudden remembering
    you are alive

    and not
    where you thought
    you would be

    i have become
    a species of almost-flight

    i negotiate with gravity
    in quiet rooms
    and call it duty

    some call it love
    some call it
    be reasonable

    i have learned
    the choreography of staying

    how to smile
    while something in me
    paces

    i saw a woman
    that woman was me

    setting a table for ghosts

    one plate for my father

    one for each son
    in their uniform of distance

    their chairs pulled out
    but empty

    and one
    for the self
    that slips out the back door
    when no one is looking

    she pours water
    for all of them

    her hands don’t shake

    she does not drink

    the bird in her chest
    has feathers made of memory
    a beak made of unfinished sentences

    its claws
    hook into the soft places
    where decisions live

    and the world keeps saying
    be calm
    be grateful

    while the sky
    indecent in its openness
    says nothing

    i ask it for instructions

    it gives me none

    only this:

    witness

    the bird does not die
    when ignored

    it grows patient
    it grows precise
    it learns your habits

    it learns
    how long you can stand yourself

    and waits

    for the moment
    you mistake silence
    for peace

    and then

    it moves

    not loud
    not dramatic

    just enough
    to ruin the lie

    i am not telling you to leave

    i am telling you to notice
    the exact second
    your breath changes

    the pause
    before you explain it away

    the shift
    you pretend not to feel

    that . .

    that is the hinge

    that is where your life
    opens

    or stays closed

    you are not broken

    you are over-kept
    over-held
    over-explained

    you are wings
    taught to apologize for air

    so stand there

    in your kitchen
    in your car
    in the long corridor
    of your thoughts

    stand there
    and feel it

    the press
    the pulse
    the almost

    the part of you
    that still wants more
    even now

    call it bird
    if you want

    call it hunger

    call it the refusal
    to live
    half a life

  • you don’t know men

    you think I stay
    because I return to the same chair

    because my hands find you and you accept them without question

    you believe that is the whole of me

    You don’t know men (graphite)

    but you don’t know men

    you don’t know
    how a man can enter a room and nothing visible changes

    and yet something does
    a slight turning

    like a field responding to wind no one else feels

    I have watched it happen without meaning to notice

    there is something beautiful in them

    I have to say that

    the way they move with a kind of quiet certainty

    as if the ground has already agreed to hold them

    you would like that about him
    you already do

    you know the man who bends down to you

    who lets you lean into his hand

    who asks nothing more than the moment he is in

    you know only the man who pets you

    but you don’t know
    how those same hands can linger after they are gone

    for years he was simply someone I knew

    a presence that did not ask to be considered
    beyond what it was

    and then

    one day

    nothing happened

    and still
    something shifted

    I cannot show you where
    there is no place to point

    no beginning you could follow

    only a feeling

    like the first sign of weather before the sky changes

    you don’t know men
    how they can remain as they are

    and still become something else
    inside you

    now

    when he reaches
    I do not step away

    it is not that I don’t see it
    it is not that I don’t understand

    it is that something in me has already answered

    and afterward
    I carry it

    that is the part
    you would not understand

    how I return here

    sit beside you

    touch you as I always have

    and still feel
    what has passed through me

    not where it happened
    but where it stayed

    you understand the world as something that arrives and remains

    you understand what can be held

    but you don’t know
    how something can move through you

    and leave no place behind for itself

    and still be there

    you don’t know men

    how they can walk away
    with nothing in their hands

    and still leave something in yours

    and yet
    there is no anger in me

    only a quiet awareness

    that I am

    not as I was

    that something in me
    has opened

    and does not close as easily

    you look at me
    as though I am whole

    as though I belong entirely to what returns

    and I let you believe it

    because you do not know my language

    you do not know men

    and still

    I stay

    You don’t know men (graphite)

  • Prelude to Rumor

    this, comes from something I’ve felt for a long time but didn’t know how to show

    the first time it happened I was twelve

    standing in front of a mirror, looking at myself too long—something shifted

    I could see my face, but I couldn’t feel that it was me, and that frightened me

    since then, I’ve learned to recognize the feeling

    it comes quietly

    I keep talking, moving doing what I’m doing but I’m not fully inside it

    this is what that feels like to me

    like something begins at one point

    here at the shoulder and then spreads outward

    not as damage

    not as pain

    but as a kind of release

    like I am still here but also moving beyond the shape that holds me

    the lines are that movement

    the color is everything that doesn’t stay contained

    the body is what remains when something in me has already stepped away

    I call it rumor in skin because it doesn’t arrive as something clear or visible

    it begins as a feeling barely there

    difficult to name

    something moving under the surface before it can be seen

    it spreads quietly

    without asking

    and by the time I recognize it

    it is already happening

    Rumor in Skin

  • Mid Flight

    I start with a line

    graphite—light
    almost unsure of itself

    because if I press too hard it becomes a commitment

    and I’ve spent years
    living inside commitments
    that didn’t fully belong to me

    I build it slowly

    short strokes
    adjustments
    erasures
    small negotiations with the page

    I try to find the shape
    something recognizable
    something that makes sense

    this is the part
    I was taught to trust

    the part that can be explained
    justified
    approved

    I hear his voice here

    clear
    decisive

    you can’t make a living with words
    you can’t make a life out of art

    so I learned

    to keep it contained

    to make it small enough
    to exist without threatening anything

    but it never stays

    somewhere in the middle

    my hand loosens

    not because I decide to

    because I can’t hold it anymore

    and that’s when I reach
    for water

    I let it fall

    not controlled
    not measured

    I let it touch the graphite
    and pull it outward

    and it spreads

    past the edges
    past the version
    that was acceptable

    past the place
    where I could still say

    this is just a drawing

    and I watch it

    because I know

    this part is not about skill

    this is release

    this is the place
    I was told
    not to trust

    words do the same thing

    they start contained
    careful
    edited
    safe

    and then

    they don’t

    they spill
    they move
    they say things
    I didn’t plan to admit

    and I come here

    again
    and again
    and again

    not because I’m searching

    because I cannot swallow it

    I tried

    for years

    to keep it inside
    to make a life
    that didn’t need this

    but something in me
    refused

    quietly

    consistently

    until it began to show up in my body

    in that pressure
    in that drop
    in those moments
    where everything looks fine

    and still

    something is missing

    this

    this is where it goes

    this page
    this space
    this place where I don’t have to explain
    or prove
    or justify

    this is where I am allowed
    to exist
    without translating myself

    the bird appears here

    or almost does

    mid-flight
    mid-fall
    mid-becoming

    I don’t try to fix it anymore

    I let it stay unclear

    because that’s the only way it feels honest

    I used to think

    if it couldn’t be something
    I could live from

    it wasn’t worth this

    this time
    this attention
    this need

    but now

    I see it differently

    this isn’t about making a living

    this is about not disappearing

    this is about giving shape to something in me that will not stay silent

    and every time
    I let it out

    in lines
    in water
    in words

    something in me
    settles

    not completely

    never completely

    but enough

    to breathe

    and maybe that’s what this is

    not a career
    not a plan

    a place

    where I don’t have to hold it all

    where I can let it move

    where I can let it be seen

    where I can stop pretending

    it isn’t there

    and that

    that is why

    I keep coming back