Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Category: writing

  • Human Interior

    I sit motionless
    until the world stops feeling louder
    than my own breathing

    I loosen my hands
    from the steering wheel

    I remind myself
    that fear is not prophecy

    That the nervous system
    can turn uncertainty
    into catastrophe
    if given enough silence

    Outside
    someone returns a shopping cart
    Someone adjusts sunglasses
    beneath a blue sky
    Someone continues living
    without realizing
    another human being nearby
    is quietly trying
    to come back to themselves

    I watch ordinary life carefully
    when this happens

    The woman loading groceries
    The wind moving through trees
    The automatic doors opening and closing

    Small evidence
    that reality remains intact

    Sometimes I lower the windows
    just to feel air move

    Sometimes I put my hand against my chest
    as if calming an injured animal

    Sometimes I say my own name
    softly inside my head
    to remind myself
    I am still here

    And eventually
    the world returns gradually

    Not all at once

    First the parking lot
    Then the sunlight
    Then my body

    Then the understanding
    that I am not losing my mind

    Only carrying too much of it
    at the same time

    Sometimes the tears arrive so quietly
    I notice only the taste

    Salt gathering at the corner of my mouth
    like the body attempting
    to return itself to the sea

    The instinct to disappear
    To heal unseen

    I think I am like cats in that way

    I hide to cure myself

    Inside parked vehicles
    Empty driveways
    Silent kitchens after midnight

    Anywhere the world cannot watch me
    trying to gather myself back together

    Sometimes I taste my own tears
    and think how strange it is
    that grief is made of salt too

    as though the body already understands
    that survival occasionally requires
    licking your own wounds
    in solitude

    Until eventually
    the breathing slows

    The thoughts loosen

    The ordinary world resumes its shape

    And I return quietly to it
    carrying myself carefully
    like something once injured

    still learning
    that not every silence
    means danger

  • Living in Exile

    America must understand this:

    No one leaves home
    because they are bored

    No one places oceans
    between themselves
    and the people they love
    for curiosity

    Human beings are not trees
    We do not rip our own roots from the earth
    unless the ground beneath us
    has stopped allowing us to live

    My parents were not chasing luxury

    They were chasing breath
    Possibility
    A future large enough
    for their children to stand upright inside

    And what courage it must require
    to leave behind everyone you love
    while pretending to your children
    that you are not terrified

    To smile on the journey
    To call sacrifice an opportunity
    To hide grief inside hard work

    America sees immigrants arrive

    But it rarely sees
    what they carried here invisibly:

    The funerals they missed
    The mothers they could not hold again
    The fathers who grew old
    in photographs

    There are people in this country
    who have spent decades
    loving their homeland from afar
    like one mourns someone still alive
    but impossibly unreachable

    That is exile

    Not politics
    Not headlines

    Exile is waking up some mornings
    unable to explain
    why your heart aches
    for a street that no longer exists
    the way you remember it

    And still
    They build
    They work
    They love this country too

    Because gratitude and grief
    can live inside the same body

    Because human beings
    are capable of carrying
    two homes at once

    The one that made them
    and the one that finally allowed them
    to dream without fear

  • Freedom’s Address

    My childhood home stood two blocks from the sea

    Not metaphorically

    Truly

    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

  • 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

  • 45 Days

    My youngest wrote me a letter

    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

    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

  • Archived Love

    I still have the backpacks

    Every one of them

    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

  • 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

  • lives inside rain

    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.

  • 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

  • God is

    the smile in your children’s faces
    that breaks you open
    before you can protect yourself

    the way morning comes anyway
    pulling light across a room
    you didn’t think you could get up in

    the breath that stays
    even when you wish it would stop
    even when you are too tired to carry it

    the small hand that finds yours in the dark
    and believes without question—that you will be there the moment you realize
    you have to be

    the light on the wall
    that doesn’t explain anything
    and still feels like mercy

    the yes you didn’t plan to say
    the one that leaves you trembling
    the one that keeps you here

    the chair you leave empty
    and still return to
    as if something might come back

    the strength you never asked for
    but were given anyway

    the quiet that holds you
    when you are falling apart
    and no one knows

    the forgiveness
    that comes back
    after you swore you were done

    the love
    you keep giving
    even after it breaks you
    even after it leaves you

    again
    and again

    the nights
    you sit alone
    holding everything together

    and no one sees

    and still

    you hold

    the way you keep showing up
    even when it costs you everything

    the way you still care
    after learning how much it hurts

    the way you make space
    for others
    when no one made it for you

    the moment you whisper
    I can’t do this

    and do it anyway

    the life you are building
    even when it feels like nothing is forming

    the quiet strength
    of not leaving yourself

    when everything in you
    wants to disappear

    God is this

    this breaking

    this holding

    this staying, the part of you that will not give up even when you beg it to

    the hope that is not gentle or easy but relentless, the force that keeps your hands open and your heart turning

    the reason you are still here, still loving, still choosing, still… after everything, still

  • 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

  • Omissions III

    you don’t say it
    but it rides shotgun anyway

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    window down, elbow out, that quiet between us doing all the talking like a highway that forgot where it was going

    you ever notice that?

    how a thing can live
    without ever being born just pacing the inside of your chest like a stray that found the door
    but won’t come in

    that’s us

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    you trim the truth
    like a man shaving in bad light

    leave just enough shadow to look like something real

    and I sit there—feeling the weight of it

    I become a sound you almost say and then don’t—and it echoes louder than if you had

    that’s where I live with you

    in the almost
    in the inch before contact
    in the breath you take
    right before you decide not to cross it

    and it’s not that you don’t feel it

    I’ve seen it
    in the way your voice slows down
    like it’s trying not to wake something up

    in the way you stay too long for a man who’s just passing through

    you linger like a question you already know the answer to
    but won’t ask

    and me

    I let it happen
    I let the silence build a house around us
    no doors
    no windows
    just walls made of everything we won’t admit

    funny thing is
    it feels warm in there

    safe, almost

    until it doesn’t

    until you leave
    and the air changes
    and I’m standing in the middle of something
    that never had a name

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    trying to explain to myself how something so present can still be missing

    how a man can hold you
    without ever really touching you

    how omission
    quiet, careful, deliberate omission

    can feel more intimate
    than truth

    and here’s the part that stays

    not you
    you go, you always go
    back to the life that has edges, definitions, doors that close

    but this—this unfinished thing this almost this sentence that refuses its period

    it lingers

    in the coffee cup you didn’t finish
    in the chair that still leans toward me
    in the air that remembers the shape of your voice

    and I

    I finally see it for what it is

    not love
    not absence

    but a corridor

    long, dim, echoing
    where we met halfway
    and decided
    without saying it

    to never reach the end

  • Art of Keeping

    Unveil me

    And call this moment truth

    Or what you will

    I have been so many things
    A voice that softened itself
    A silence that learned to endure
    A hand that held
    more than it was meant to carry

    I have been a bird
    Singing in red
    A wound that would not close

    I gathered myself inward
    Folded light into smaller shapes
    Asked what hurt
    to become less visible

    But it remained

    Not louder just closer

    So I stopped asking it

    To disappear

    I let it stand as it is

    Unhidden
    Unresolved
    And still reaching

    Learning

    The careful art of keeping

  • Where noise ends

    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

  • Arriver

    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

  • Almost Mine

    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

  • Arrows & Metaphors

    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

  • Viability

    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

  • Half Dark

    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

  • Mathematics

    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

  • Strangers

    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

  • March 14

    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

  • rəˈzôlv

    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

  • Utmost love

    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

  • To my sons

    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

  • Out’loud

    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

  • Ode to us

    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

  • For me

    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

  • Insoluble

    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

  • Fevered

    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

  • Hemostasis

    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

  • Thistle of a verb

    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

  • Personal

    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.

  • Untitled

    Love

    If fire is water

    You are

    A diaphanous drop

  • Ether

    Ether

    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

  • Glass

    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

  • Tell me

    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

  • Above Ground

    cartels quiver

    while man

    somewhat

    and unwillingly

    surrenders

    his fist, for love

  • Truth About Love

    some say it’s a bird

    some say it’s absurd

    but when I asked you

    a nest was growing

    beneath your bed