Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: allegory

  • 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)

  • I stay

    you walk past me
    like you’re still carrying the outside in with you

    the door closes
    but it doesn’t take it with it

    keys fall
    bag falls
    your hands don’t

    they reach for paper
    like it won’t ask you anything back

    you don’t look at me
    not yet

    and I want to tell you

    it can wait

    you can sit first
    you can breathe

    but I don’t have that kind of voice

    so I stay quiet

    like always

    you work fast
    too fast

    like something is right behind you
    breathing
    calling your name
    in a voice you don’t answer

    I hear it

    I wish you could hear it
    the way I do

    but I can’t give it to you

    I can only watch
    as your hands press harder

    like pressure might fix it

    I have seen you in other lives

    same body
    different light

    this home has seen it too

    birthdays
    graduations
    deaths

    walls holding sound
    long after it leaves

    your sons became men

    one by one
    they walked out of these rooms

    carrying pieces of you with them

    the doors closed softer each time

    and the house learned
    how to be quiet

    you used to turn toward it

    now you turn inward

    and I

    I remember everything
    you don’t say out loud

    you move like a held breath

    like if you stop
    everything will rise at once

    I want to tell you
    it’s already there

    it’s not waiting

    but I am not made for words

    so I sit

    and breathe slow
    for both of us

    you go somewhere

    I know the place

    your body stays
    but you leave it

    your eyes change

    the room feels it

    I go with you

    I always go with you

    because I can

    because you don’t know how to stay there alone

    you give things up early

    like you’re afraid
    of what might stay

    I want to tell you

    not everything that stays
    hurts

    not everything that grows
    will take from you

    but I don’t have language

    only presence

    only this small body
    that follows you
    without question

    there are others

    I know them too

    the ones you don’t speak about but carry anyway

    I feel them
    in the way your breathing breaks
    in the way your hands hesitate
    over nothing

    I sit with you there

    I wish I could say
    their names with you

    I wish I could tell you
    they are still soft inside you

    but I can’t

    so I stay

    there are nights
    you are not here

    even when you are

    you sit in front of me
    but you are somewhere deeper

    and I want to call you back

    I want to say
    come here
    stay here
    with me

    but all I can do

    is walk closer

    sit beside you

    wait

    and then

    you come find me

    not because I called you

    but because something in you
    remembers

    my stillness
    my quiet
    my staying

    your hand reaches

    your body softens

    your breath returns

    and I feel it

    that moment
    when you come back into yourself

    I would tell you
    you don’t have to leave like that

    I would tell you
    you are safe here

    I would tell you
    you are still whole
    even when you feel like you are not

    but I was not made
    for your language

    so I stay

    where you can find me

    every time you forget
    where you are

    So I stay

  • 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

  • Held

    God is in the wrist
    no, before the wrist
    in that small electric yes
    that happens before I move

    Pencil

    I sit with paper like a woman with too many thoughts

    He says nothing

    Which is how I know it’s Him

    Then—a line

    It goes crooked on purpose

    Leans into green

    Like it’s remembering a forest

    I’ve never seen but somehow miss

    I try to fix it
    He laughs in sunlight

    Watercolor

    Yellow breaks open
    right through the middle of my doubt

    Splits it clean, spills everywhere

    He guides like that
    Not neat
    Not polite

    Not asking if I’m ready just pushing light
    through whatever part of me is still resisting being seen

    My hand follows
    like it’s been waiting its whole life to stop pretending it knows where it’s going —with one drop of color

    Watercolor

    I didn’t plan that reach
    I didn’t plan anything

    That’s the miracle

    God is not in the finished piece

    God is in the ruin of control

    In the moment I let the brush wander and it doesn’t get lost

    He was never waiting
    at the end

    He was in every mark
    I almost didn’t make

    The Woodlands, Texas

  • 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

  • Omissions II

    And I

    I walk straight through them

    Tried to forgive the silence by giving it a story

    Told myself
    Some truths are shy
    Some words take longer to arrive

    Some men speak in seasons

    But even the seasons confess

    They arrive

    They leave

    They mark their passing with undeniable change

    I understand
    that omission is not emptiness

    And yet . .

  • Omissions

    I don’t catch you in lies— you’re too careful for that.

    You hand me daylight
    without ever mentioning the night you walked through.

    And I—
    I stand there, holding a clean sentence feeling the dirt underneath it.

    Something is always missing but never named.

    Like a chair pulled out
    from a table I didn’t see set.

    Like a door still warm
    from being closed
    just before I arrived.

    You speak in completed thoughts, but I hear the hinge—that small metallic truth swinging somewhere just outside the room.

    I tried to name you like weather, to soften the edges of you—but even storms confess.

    Even the tide tells on itself.

    So I begin to doubt
    my own architecture

    maybe the house was always this uneven

    maybe the floor was meant to tilt like this

    maybe the silence is mine.

    But no—it’s the way you curate reality like a careful museum
    every absence framed
    as if it belongs.

    And I walk through it,
    quiet, hands behind my back, trying not to touch
    what isn’t there.

    To be continued

  • Afterlight

    I watched the sun hide
    and the birds went after it

    Habit of following

    not all at once, not in some perfect formation
    you could name or study

    just one lifting then another then more until the sky itself looked like it had decided not to stay still

    like something moved through them and they answered

    no thinking
    no pausing
    no weighing what it meant

    just wing
    and direction

    and me —I stayed

    because that’s what we do

    we stand there
    and understand it

    we know the sun is leaving
    we know it comes back
    we know this is the oldest pattern
    there is

    light goes
    light returns

    we’ve made peace with it or at least we pretend to

    we tell ourselves
    this is how things continue

    and still—they go

    small bodies
    holding the last heat of it
    as if they can feel
    the exact moment
    it slips out of reach

    and they refuse
    to let it go quietly

    they follow past where it makes sense past where there is anything left to follow

    and I watch them
    thinking how strange it is

    they don’t know
    what we know

    they don’t know about tomorrow
    or return
    or the comfort
    of things coming back

    to them
    light is not a promise

    it’s an occurrence

    it was there

    it touched them

    it warmed them

    and now it isn’t

    and that is enough
    to move

    so they move

    and we don’t

    we stay
    we explain
    we name it
    so it hurts less

    we say
    it’s fine
    it’s supposed to happen

    we say
    it will come back

    we say
    wait

    and we do

    we learn how to stand still
    inside loss
    and call it understanding

    and then

    when everything is gone
    when the sky empties itself of even the idea of light

    there’s always one

    Habit of following

    a songbird somewhere
    you can’t see

    still singing

    not louder than the dark
    not enough to change anything

    just steady

    like it missed the ending
    or chose not to believe in it

    and that’s when it turns

    because we say we’re different
    we say we understand

    but we do it too

    just not with wings

    we call things back
    in quieter ways

    in memory
    in longing
    in the way we return
    to what is already gone
    and sit there with it
    as if it might shift

    we replay voices
    we hold onto warmth
    long after it has left the room

    we don’t rise into the sky

    but we follow

    in thought
    in feeling
    in the quiet insistence
    that something that mattered should not end so cleanly

    and I stand there
    between them

    their instinct
    and my knowing

    knowing the sun will return without being called

    knowing there is no need

    and still

    feeling it

    that pull
    deep and unreasonable

    to call it back

    as if, just once

    it might listen

    Habit of Following

  • Nowhere to Land

    what do I do with this

    please tell me

    what does a woman do
    when a man can sit in front of her feel everything

    and then walk out of it like it never asked anything of him

    what do I do with it

    when the body won’t settle

    when the hands won’t rest

    when something in me feels slightly outside of itself

    like I’m watching
    my own mind
    try to make sense of you

    of the way you stayed
    and didn’t stay

    of the way something opened and you closed it
    without even touching it

    what have you done

    no—what has this done

    because it sits in me like something unfinished
    like something that refuses to find a place

    and I keep going back to the same few seconds

    the same shift the same moment you became someone else without moving

    and I’m here
    holding both versions the one who leaned in

    And the one
    who looked at me after
    like nothing had crossed

    and it makes me feel

    ill

    not sick
    not broken

    just… off

    like something in me
    knows this mattered

    and something in you
    wouldn’t stay

    and I don’t know
    how to put that down

    I don’t know
    how to return

    because —I have left before

    I have walked away
    from things that broke me

    I know how to go

    I know how to close a door

    but this

    this feels like something
    I stepped into

    that won’t let me out and there’s this thought
    I can’t quiet

    what if I made it all up

    what if it only ever lived
    on my side

    and still

    even with that

    I can’t walk away

    because I didn’t imagine
    the feeling

    I felt it—fully

    and maybe that’s it

    maybe I went all the way in and you didn’t stay there

    and now I’m left with something that feels real

    but has nowhere to land and tonight —I tried to draw it and my hands trembled

    like they knew before I did— what I was touching

    and I had to stop

    because something in it made me nauseous

    like seeing it outside of me

    made it undeniable

    and now—there’s nowhere to put it back

    so I come here to digitally cure myself

    and still —it stays awake in me and I keep thinking how can you sleep

    how can you sleep
    knowing this

    or not knowing it at all

    how can you close your eyes when something like this

    is still moving in me

    Nowhere to Land

  • Living Inside Movement

    (2:00 a.m.)

    I wasn’t trying to write.

    I picked up charcoal
    because I needed somewhere to put it.

    Whatever this is. Just lines. Nothing finished. Nothing that stays still long enough to make sense.

    I kept trying to shape it
    into something I could recognize.

    Couldn’t.

    Every time I thought I had it—It moved.

    So I stopped trying to make it look like anything.

    Just let my hand follow it. That’s when it felt closer.

    Not right—just… closer.

    Same thing here.

    I’m not writing to explain it. I don’t even think I can.

    I’m writing because it won’t sit still inside me.

    Because it keeps happening and then disappearing like it was never there.

    And I’m left with it
    Whatever’s left of it
    trying to hold onto something that doesn’t hold back.

    So this isn’t a story.

    It’s not even a thought all the way through.

    It’s just me trying to catch something in the moment it almost becomes real.

    Before it moves again.

    ‘Living Inside Movement’

    I keep seeing you
    in the middle of things

    Never where anything starts, never where anything ends

    You just show up, and I let you

    Like it’s something I agreed to a long time ago without realizing it

    We talk—we always talk—about everything that doesn’t matter

    Because the one thing that does would change everything

    And we’re not willing to do that

    So we don’t

    We just stay here
    Living inside movement,
    letting it keep going
    because stopping it
    would force it to become something real

    And I think that’s
    what’s wearing me down

    Not you
    Not even this

    Just the way
    it never gets to land the way I feel it and then have to pretend
    I don’t

    The way you look at me
    like something is there
    and then leave like nothing is

    I don’t think you’re lying

    I think

    You’ve learned
    how to live inside it
    without letting it touch
    the parts of your life
    that would break

    I haven’t

    And maybe that’s the difference between us

    You go back to something solid, something defined,
    something that makes sense to the world

    And I stay here—in something that only exists when you’re standing in front of me

    And I hate that sometimes

    I hate how real it feels
    when you’re here, and how quickly it disappears when you’re not

    I hate that I’ve learned
    how to adjust to that

    How to hold it without asking for more

    Without asking you to choose it

    And I’m tired

    Not loudly—Not in a way anyone would see

    Just in that quiet place
    where something keeps going long after it should have stopped

    And still—I stay

    Not because I don’t know better

    Not because I’m waiting

    But because something in me still believes
    this isn’t nothing

    That it matters in some way that doesn’t have a place to exist

    So I stay—in something that moves, but never arrives

    And maybe one day
    I’ll get tired enough
    to step out of it

    Or maybe I won’t

    Maybe I’ll just keep
    living here—in this quiet, unfinished space

    Where something real
    keeps happening
    without ever becoming anything

    I can call mine

  • NightBird

    Since when do birds sing at night ?

    I lie there listening

    Wondering

    If I’ve missed this my whole life

    Or if something in me has only now grown quiet enough to hear it

    It doesn’t sound mistaken

    It doesn’t sound lost

    Just one note

    Then another

    Falling into the dark as if it belongs there

    Since when does the night allow this?

    I thought it was meant
    to close things

    To gather everything inward

    To soften it into silence

    But the bird does not soften

    It continues

    As though the hour is not an ending but an opening

    And I begin to wonder

    Since when have we decided there is a right time to be heard ?

    Because the bird does not wait

    It does not hold back
    until morning makes sense of it

    It sings because it is awake

    And I am awake too

    In the same dark

    Under the same quiet sky

    Carrying something just as restless

    Just as certain

    Just as unwilling to be quiet

    And it comes to me simple, undeniable

    We are not different

    We have only learned

    To wait

    The bird has not

    It sings as if the hour
    cannot contain it

    And I lie there listening not only to the sound

    But to the space it opens in me

    And the question it leaves behind

    Since when did I begin to believe – I had to be silent just because it was night?

    ‘NightBird’

  • Woman

    You ask me why I love being a woman.

    I could speak of the ways we are taught to tend.

    To hold, to soften.

    A rocking chair postured in selflessness.

    Moving for others, rarely for itself.

    That is one truth, but not the only one.

    There is a fullness I came to. Without asking.

    Not given, not earned, something that lived in me long before I knew
    how to name it.

    The fullness I carry
    belongs to no one
    who might touch me.

    It is not awakened, it does not wait.

    I have lived in opposition to my own shape, called it discipline, called it virtue.

    Until even silence grew tired of my resistance.

    Now there is no argument.

    My body

    Stands, soft, unrevised.

    If I am loved, it is incidental, a passing light through a room
    already lit.

  • Instructions

    He tells me not to cross my legs

    So I sit as one might sit

    Watching

    Not interfering too quickly

    My legs

    So used to folding like branches seeking each other

    Now rest apart

    Two quiet limbs learning distance

    They say a narrowing

    I imagine it as a path in the woods

    Grown thin with seasons

    A place where light enters more carefully

    Where even the smallest step must be placed with intention

    There is a restlessness in me

    Not loud, but persistent

    Like wind moving through tall grass just out of sight

    My body remembers
    what it once did without asking

    It leans toward itself,
    tries to close, to return to the comfort of its own shape

    And I stop it, gently now

    Not with force
    Just a quiet redirection

    In this small act I begin to notice more

    The weight of my own presence

    The way I occupy space

    The subtle shifting
    of balance and breath

    And then something softer embraces me

    Feels like dusk settling over a field

    Like water finding its level

    A knowing that I do not have to hold all of this by effort alone

    I imagine being carried the way the earth carries root

    The way the river carries stone

    Not by removing them

    But making room
    for their passage

    So I sit

    In this small

    Altered posture

    As if my body itself
    were a landscape

    Asking me to walk it

  • Footnotes

    There is a quiet, lodged in my spine

    Not mercy, not rest

    A held breath that has learned to last

    They call it L5
    They dress it in tidy syllables

    Compression

    Degeneration

    Small, sterile consolations

    For something that does not console

    My body refuses neatness

    It speaks in pressure
    In the slow persuasion of weight

    In the way a column leans and does not admit it

    In the way it carries
    long past asking

    Some days it rises like a verdict

    Not loud, never theatrical, only exact

    YOU WILL MOVE
    BUT DIFFERENTLY

    And I do

    I rise into it

    Into the narrow corridor of standing

    Into the careful arithmetic of steps

    Measuring what remains against what is required

    There are mornings
    when my body feels older than light

    As if time has settled in me unevenly

    Heavier in the places no one sees

    And still
    there is no audience for this

    No ceremony
    for the quiet labor
    of holding oneself together

    Only this private endurance

    This unremarked fidelity to movement

    I have bent around it

    Reshaped myself to accommodate the untied

    Made room for the ache
    as one makes room
    for a difficult truth

    And somewhere in that making, something fierce remained

    Not untouched, but unwilling to disappear

    The spine bends, but it does not relinquish me

    It holds, not gently, not kindly, but with a severity that resembles grace

    I have learned that faith is not brightness, not relief, not even hope as it is often spoken

    FAITH, is this . .

    The quiet decision to stand again inside a body that has already asked too much of itself

    To move, when movement is no longer given, but taken

    Step by deliberate step

    To carry what has no language

    And so

    I proceed, revised, contained

    Still bearing my own weight

    Not because I am unbroken

    But because
    I did not leave when breaking began

  • Preface

    I did not mean to write this.

    It came the way certain things do. Without asking, without a plan.

    As if something in me had grown tired of remaining hidden.

    Nothing here is finished. Nothing has been made whole.

    This digital space holds what has shifted, what softened, what could not return to where it once rested.

    If there is tenderness, it is small and easily missed.

    If there is opening, it is not sudden, only a slow turning toward something.

    I am still learning to trust.

    There was a time I believed that staying closed was the only way to remain intact.

    That if I held myself carefully enough, quietly enough, nothing could reach me that might take more than I was willing to give.

    And I became very good at it.

    I learned how to remain how to speak, how to move through the world with precision, with control, with a kind of quiet restraint that made everything appear unchanged.

    But there is a quiet cost to that kind of living.

    You begin to disappear from yourself.

    You begin to forget what it feels like to exist without guarding every part of you.

    You begin to live as something contained, not something alive.

    And somewhere in that without my permission something in me began to resist.

    Not loudly.

    Not all at once.

    Just enough to make it impossible to return to what I was.

    And that is where these words come from.

    From the place I kept hidden, not because it was empty, but because it was too full.

    From a self that has always spoken in images

    In petals that refuse their bloom.

    In soil that remembers everything.

    In light that does not arrive but waits until it is allowed.

    My metaphors are not decoration.

    They are translation.

    They are the closest I can come to saying what I have carried, without breaking it open too quickly.

    Without losing what it means to me in the telling.

    If you know how to read them.

    You will know me.

    Not entirely.

    But in the places where language hesitates.

    Where meaning slips.

    Where something is felt before it is understood.

    Because . .

    That is where I live.

    Between what I can say and what I cannot.

    Between clarity and concealment.

    Between the self I offer.

    And the one I keep just out of reach.

    Words arrive to me.

    And I must place them somewhere, before they begin to weep within me.

    They do not come when I am ready.

    They come when I am unguarded.

    Late, when the world has quieted.

    When the hour no longer belongs to anything but what I have kept inside.

    Words keep me awake.

    They find me in the stillness of 1 a.m.

    Insistent, unresolved as if they have been waiting for the moment I can no longer hold them back.

    And I write not because I choose to, but because I cannot leave them there.

    Unplaced.

    Unspoken.

    Turning inward until they begin to break me open.

    So this . .

    All of this.

    Is not a narrative.

    It is not a resolution.

    It is a record of what happens when I allow myself to remain present with what I feel.

    Without forcing it into something easier, cleaner, or more complete.

    Read this as you would something living.

    With patience.

    With care, without needing it to become anything other than what it is.

    Because I am still here learning how to exist within myself without retreating.

    Learning how to stay when every instinct tells me to close.

    Learning how to let something be seen without disappearing in the process.

    And these words . .

    They are simply what remains.

    When I choose, even briefly, to no longer hide.

  • Petal Riser

    You take me the way the sun finds a flower that never learned its morning

    Not with warmth, but with a patience that does not leave

    I had grown used to the dark

    The kind that settles into the root

    Until even the idea of opening feels like a mistake

    The garden did not question me

    It let me remain folded into myself

    Petal against petal, a small life no one could enter

    And no one could ruin

    It worked

    Nothing reached me

    Nothing stayed

    I waited for the taking

    I knew how it went—how anything that sees you open does not stop

    So I held myself tighter

    Closed even against the light

    As if survival meant never being seen soft again

    And still

    Something in me began to give

    Not bloom, never bloom

    Just a slight failure in my keeping

    A single petal loosening as if it had grown tired of protecting what no one had come for

    I felt it like grief

    Sharp, quiet, uninvited

    The body remembering something it had buried to keep living

    You saw it

    And you did nothing

    You did not reach

    You did not take

    You did not ask for more

    You stayed as if that one small opening was already too much to ask of me

    And that

    That is what broke me

    Because I had been taught that anything that stays will hurt you eventually

    That love is only a slower kind of loss

    But you

    You stayed exactly where I left you

    As if I did not have to give you anything else

    And so

    I opened a little more

    Not for you

    Not even for the light

    But because, for the first time

    I felt something I did not recognize

    The absence of harm

    And it was unbearable

    Because it meant

    I had been closed all this time for something that was not here

    And now

    I do not know how far I can open

    I do not know if the dark will return

    But something in me

    Something small, tired, still alive

    Keeps loosening despite it

    Because you did not take me when you could have

    Because you did not break me when I was already open enough to be broken

    Because you stayed long enough for me to feel what it is to be held in the light

    And not disappear

  • Estuary

    Your blood is like mine

    Not in name

    Not in the quiet archives of family

    But in the way it rises when the world leans close

    It is a red tide

    Salted with memory

    Restless beneath the skin

    Moving as the sea moves

    Returning, returning

    Even when there is nowhere left to arrive

    I do not need to see it

    I know it by your nearness

    As though the hour itself had softened for you

    How your leaving bends

    Becoming a slow eclipse that refuses its own completion

    There is something in you that does not close

    Mine answers

    It lifts within me

    A warm insistence

    A quiet rebellion against distance

    We are not the same

    No, we are not

    But there is a crossing

    A hidden estuary

    Where your current meets mine

    There, what should disperse gathers

    What should end, lingers

    Like heat in the evening walls

    Like fruit left open to the sun

    Like the last light that refuses to withdraw from the body of the day

    Your blood is like mine

    It does not forget the shore it has touched

  • Pathology of Absence

    No pathology explains why your absence presents as pain

    Though there was an incision, executed with a precision that bordered on virtue

    Clean margins

    Controlled depth

    No visible hemorrhage

    It was not termed entry

    Only a necessary intervention

    A measured breach expected to resolve without complication

    You approximated the tissue

    Sutured silence in meticulous layers

    Drew language taut to preserve the semblance of integrity

    To maintain the fiction of an unviolated surface

    You remained clinically intact

    Vital signs unremarkable

    Structure uncompromised

    A closed system governed by its own discipline

    While . . I

    Less absolute in containment, began to register deviation

    A persistent tachycardia of thought

    A subdermal inflammation without locus or lesion

    A progressive sensitization to absence itself

    As though the body, having once admitted you, refused your removal

    No anomaly sufficient to warrant intervention

    Only a condition diffuse, insidious, resistant to classification

    And now

    I feel like

    I am living in a space

    Where no scalpel can excise what remains

    And still

    No pathology explains why your absence presents as pain

  • Anatomy of Proximity

    We stand within a room that listens

    Walls attenuated to membranes

    The air drawn taut, almost sterile

    You do not touch me

    Still—something in me ignites

    A filament catching beneath the sternum

    Your nearness is surgical

    Meticulous

    It locates the fault line in my composure with unnerving precision

    Then lingers there

    Not cutting, not yet

    Only mapping the terrain of where I might yield

    Warmth transferred with clinical patience

    As though sensation itself were being measured, dose by careful dose

    I feel you subcutaneously

    This is not love

    But we hover

    God, how precisely we hover

    Two bodies aligned in tension, studying this narrowing distance

    As though it were an aperture through which something irreversible might pass

    And still, you do not touch me

    Yet something has already been altered—your proximity

    A marked intrusion upon my interior

    A presence that settles just beneath the threshold of skin

    And I carry it—as a sustained incision

    Clean, deliberate, and exquisitely unclosed

  • In Plain Sight

    He arrived, sudden, unannounced

    His face breaking through the ordinary distance

    As if it had always been meant to

    No message, no soft entry, no careful arrangement of words

    Just him, immediate

    Carried to me through light, through that thin permission we give each other to be seen

    And I saw him

    Not reduced to language, not filtered through delay

    But moving, speaking, choosing

    Alive inside the small machinery of his day

    I

    In bed

    Unarranged

    Held in that quiet, private softness reserved for no one but myself

    And still, he looked at me

    Not in passing

    Not by accident

    He held me there for a moment, as I was

    He spoke, mostly

    Carried the weight of it

    Filled the space with motion, with words

    With the easy continuity of his voice moving ahead of mine

    I let him

    Watched him walk, turn, consider

    Watched the way a person forgets himself when he is simply being

    There is something unmistakable about witnessing someone like that

    Not asking, not offering

    Just continuing

    And still, I stayed

    Not because I had to but because something in it refused to be interrupted

    Distance remained where it was—unchanged

    Intact—and yet, for a while, it lost its authority

    He did not call

    He came into view, and stayed long enough to leave a trace

    I did not expect to keep

  • Vanilla Sky

    Light moved differently today, not in rays

    But in long, quiet exhalations

    Spilling over rooftops

    Over your shoulders

    Over the place where my name almost lived on your lips

    Everything was touched

    By a softened glow

    Not the kind that blinds

    But the kind that remembers what it once was

    I stood there

    Half in shadow

    Half inside a color

    That had no name

    Except the one my body gave it

    When you looked at me like that

    Like time had loosened its grip

    Just enough

    For us to exist without consequence

    There was no urgency in you

    No hunger that devours

    Only that quiet pull

    The kind that gathers in the spaces between words in a shared cup

    In the unnoticed exchange of breath and heat

    And something dangerously close to peace

    If I closed my eyes

    I could still feel it

    That horizon bending slightly toward us

    As if the world itself were conspiring to keep us suspended there

    A moment longer

    Not lovers

    Not strangers

    Just the two of us

    Held gently

    Inside a sky

  • Voltage III

    Do not come near me carelessly

    I have become fluent in the exquisite discipline of restraint

    There was a time

    When every bright impulse might have escaped me at once

    Without reverence for consequence

    I no longer belong to that kind of ruin

    Now I know the holy intelligence of what is withheld

    The grandeur of a silence so charged it can alter the temperature of a room

    You stand there

    And the air rearranges itself

    Not because of touch

    That would be too simple

    Something passes between us

    Subtle as a filament beneath glass

    Invisible until it burns

    Refined enough to make stillness feel like an event

    I do not reach

    I let the distance glow

    I let it become unbearable with elegance

    Because desire, when it has matured beyond appetite, does not beg for completion

    It acquires gravity, and everything in its field begins, quietly, to lean

    So if I cross toward you

    It will not be from weakness

    Nor from hunger without thought

    It will be because

    I have measured the cost of contact

    And found it beautiful

    And when I touch you

    It will not feel like beginning

    It will feel like recognition at its most dangerous

    As though something ancient in the blood had been waiting

    For precisely this permission

    The End

  • Voltage II

    But listen

    Even lightning

    Must gather itself before it cleaves the sky

    I have gathered

    I have stood inside the anatomy of collapse and named it rehearsal

    Have felt the surge rise beneath my ribs

    And chosen—not to extinguish it—but to contain

    There is power in the unspent

    There is dominion in the held breath that does not betray itself

    You think stillness is absence?

    No—it is a field of charged quiet

    A storm disciplined into elegance

    A body that could unravel the room and instead chooses to remain

    So do not come near me expecting softness alone

    I am composed of forces that negotiate with fire

    That bend impulse into precision

    That hold entire voltages behind an unshaken gaze

    And if I touch you—it will not be by accident

    It will be because I have decided exactly how much of the current you can survive

    To be continued . .

  • Inescapable (III)

    I have begun to release what was never entrusted to me—not you, not entirely—but the silent labor of sustaining what you leave unfinished.

    There is a distinction now—subtle, but irrevocable.

    It did not arrive through resolve, but through depletion—through that slow recognition.

    That devotion without reciprocity becomes erosion. I no longer extend myself toward you with the same unguarded impulse.

    Not because the feeling has diminished—but because it has clarified.

    You remain consistent in your inconsistencies—present in fragments, attentive in intervals, returning just enough to ensure nothing dissolves.

    And I—I have ceased to assemble meaning from what is partial.

    There is a composure in me now that was not there before—not detachment, not absence—but a contained awareness that does not pursue what does not arrive whole.

    I have come to understand that what holds substance does not require persuasion, does not depend on endurance, does not ask to be maintained by one.

    So I withdraw my effort from what was never equally carried.

    Not in resistance, not in finality—but in preservation.

    You remain within that familiar distance—accessible, yet never fully offered.

    And I remain—but altered. No longer oriented toward you, but returned to my own center of gravity.

    There is a stillness here that does not ache—a quiet reordering of where I place my energy, of what I permit to remain unfinished within me.

    And in this—without declaration, without urgency—I arrive at a certainty I do not need to speak aloud: what does not meet me in its fullness will no longer hold me in its absence.

    Because I have stood in the quiet of this long enough to understand the difference between what is shared and what is endured alone.

    And I have endured enough. Not loudly, not visibly—but in the private chambers of a feeling that was never returned with equal weight.

    And still—I do not regret you. Not the moments, not the knowing, not even the cost. But I can no longer remain where I am not fully received.

    And so—without resistance, without bitterness, without the need to be understood—I release what never chose me in the way I chose it.

    And in the quiet that follows, in the space you no longer occupy in the same way—there is something unexpectedly tender: the return of myself. And with that knowing—unforced, undeniable—I remain whole.

    The End

  • Undertow (III)

    And still

    I am not afraid

    I have swallowed

    Darker things, than this

    I have carried absence

    The undertow is not cruel

    It is exact

    It strips me

    Not of love, but of illusion

    What remains

    Is something harder

    Something luminous in its fracture

    A pulse that does not ask to be held

    A body that does not confuse

    Touch with arrival

    If you reach for me now

    You will not find the me that floated toward you

    Like an offering

    You will find depth

    You will find pressure

    You will find a silence

    And still

    There is heat here

    Strange

    Feral

    Uncharted

    The kind that burns

    Without flame

    The kind that lives

    In the center of a woman

    Who has learned

    How to disappear

    Without ever leaving

    I am no longer asking to be saved

    I am becoming the thing

    That survives the drowning

    To be continued . .

  • Sunblood (III)

    and now

    it settles

    not gone
    not ever that

    i feel it still

    in the quiet parts of me
    where things don’t ask
    to be explained

    it isn’t soft

    no

    it has teeth

    it knows how to stay
    without asking permission

    and i

    i let it

    i don’t reach for you

    that would be too easy
    too human

    and this

    this – is something else

    something that doesn’t beg

    doesn’t promise

    doesn’t belong

    it just exists

    between that space
    where nothing is said
    and everything is understood

    i could pull it closer

    i could burn it out

    but both would ruin it

    so i leave it

    untouched
    unnamed
    alive

    because there is a kind of love

    that doesn’t need a future

    to prove
    it happened

    and a kind of hunger

    that learns
    to live

    without being fed

    and still

    it stays

    not louder
    not weaker

    just deeper

    like something
    that chose

    to become
    part of me

    The End

  • 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

  • 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

  • When we met

    Your less•ness

    Was more

    Gazing at you

    Felt elegant

    Over mirrors

    While you traced

    Curvatures of my faith

    Christ, hanging over us

    More preciser than light

    And yet, you took me

    Through a straight line

    Inviting flames to our bed

    Sparks to invisible

    For poetry to withstand

  • Distance•r

    I see • you

    Bringing rain

    To my hands

    Like a plant • waits

    To become • a tree

    Who am • I

    To • you

    In this whole earth

    Equating love

    For leaves

  • When I can’t sleep . .

    I think of color

    Conte technique

    Over this pillow

    I shade pebbles

    Greater than your hands

    Scattering through debris of seeds

    In a place with so few trees

    Hearing your echo intertwined with mine

    What is ‘this’ passion

    If you can’t meet me halfway

    Sometimes

    You feel like a void

    That I follow

    Without following you

    A portraiture

    The tonality

    Of a single text

  • Vocal

    At dusk

    I become

    Part of him

    Quietly placing

    Dishes in suitcases

    Light yellow

    Leather tones

    Such a sense of grief

    When you cover my eyes

    And show me

    The inside of your world

    Fresh footed staircase

    Spiraling sideways

    Onto the longest corridor

    Linear shadows

    Of a once lived home

    I am not indifferent

    To your pain

    I too

    Have traveled

    On this road

  • Hero

    The fire you create

    Keeps me up at night

    Suspended, perhaps

    In this tonality

    My soul, alone

    Fears reciprocity

    I am a – faithfullest

    We can’t be friends

    Intimacy too lit

    Feels like an infidel

    In this physiology

    I am no longer

    The protagonist

    It’s you, your heart

    It’s pulsing valves

    Such regurgitation

    For a man, like you

  • 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

  • Impetuous

    A subtle lullaby

    Bronzed

    As the earth rotates

    Such wonder

    Touching a vain

    Girl’s heart. . .

  • Shades of Purgatory

    I once knew

    How light was spent

    Its trickling effects

    As faith pointed

    With a golden rod

    My own despair

    Sat in a womb of fear

    Aware it was not science

    My conscious inadvertently

    Reversed millions of words

    Narrowing it down to one

    -God

  • Quiet Resentment

    Heavy lines

    Mounted over me

    These purple nights

    Drowning super stars

    Forgetting what it is to write

    Phosphorus dynamite

    Encircles and intertwines

    Muting one decade at a time

  • Early Poems

    This so called, craft

    Floats, steady, and upwards

    Myself, in a time of mirrors

    – August

  • Just hold . .

    Stone COLD

    Hold ON

    You’re still STRONG

    NERVE pain loneliness

    I haven’t LEARNED anything

    EXCEPT for the LINES across your FACE

    MORE human, than YESTERDAY

  • To write, is . .

    Like random twilights of dust

    So distant, only God could see

    Yesteryears, my love

    And yesterwants

  • Next Train . .

    I am adapting

    Cowardly, but adapting

    This is distinction

    Between surviving

    And existence

  • Poetry

    My mercy

    A need to substitute

    My mouth, for a dream

    Different homes

    Pincushions for doorknobs

    Damnit I love you

  • ‘Brightness Of My Dark’

    One must be blind

    Stripping God of its own light

    Things none of us could be

    The profound luster in lines

    It’s happening to me

    A wound, too echo’d to reveal

    That love is not found in days

  • Notes . .

    A writer sometimes retains only those poems that find no place. A strange ineffable experience of the mind, its enormous success of self love

    Almost fierce

    Cannot be

    Until Am is Am

    My very veins

    In its desire to be

  • Love Overmuch

    Tigers brilliantly move

    Bright limbs of mortals

    Overpowered and mute

    Utmost – love

    No more still

    Than your tongue’d speech

  • To be broken . .

    Fight for insight

    God’s copyright

    In this interior of light

    My signature becomes

    A wrath that requires no reason

  • Almost . .

    Forgot

    How still

    Your mind is

    This is not

    A compliment

    It’s rhetoric,

    It chokes

    The good parts of me

  • ‘in no particular order’

    Hang over my feet

    Like lousy flowers

    That love just like me

  • Mimic

    The eternities of a second

    My whole life to solve

    Pitiless searches for a body

    To grow old with

    Nameless sensations

    Such a cruel thing

    To miss the dead

    With this immeasurable clarity

    Like gravid drops of hope

    Spinning over itself

    Tirelessly, till we learn

    How to love, again . .

  • Untimely

    The furthest of reaches

    Sex seal serpentines

    These syllogisms

    Transform me

    Inside is outside

    It is everywhere

    And nowhere

    Invented

    Devoured

    – Man

  • Nobody Knows

    We live in identical rooms

    We blankly wake, we greet

    From one balcony to another

    Successively for a hundred years

    Between now and tomorrow

    We will spend the rest of our days

    Growing gardens out of angry stars

  • Untitled

    Love clamps itself

    Leaving small gaps

    With just enough spaces

    Allowing you to taste

    Your very own tongue

  • Lessness

    Communicate

    A little more

    Than twice

    Like syllables

    Gain enormousness

    Looking for us

    In the middle

    Of the night

  • Táctil

    There’s no such thing

    As neatness

    When it comes

    To our minds

    I breath

    You flicker

    Incalculable

    Of course . .

  • L’absente

    Tried to draw

    The sound of you

    All I found, was . .

    A flying crate