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
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
to press it into beautiful language where it could be mistaken for art instead of ache
i learned long ago how to make loneliness appear elegant
how to carry devastation with composed hands how to smile through exhaustion how to turn silence into something almost holy
i became very skilled at surviving beautifully
but some loves arrive like a hidden fracture beneath ice
silent at first nearly invisible
until one day everything beneath you gives way
and suddenly there you are
standing inside the carefully ordered structure of your own life surrounded by rituals responsibility and the exhausting dignity of self-containment
realizing your body has begun longing again against your permission
then someone enters your solitude gently
looks at you too carefully learns your exhaustion by sight touches you as though your sadness is something fragile enough to deserve tenderness
so forgive me
this is not usually how i speak
but fuck
‘This Fucking Love’ | Charcoal
i saw the holiest parts of myself ruined by this fucking love
not ruined like fire ruins a house no ruined the way salt ruins water quietly completely until nothing inside you tastes the same again
God . . what a vulgar miracle it is to meet someone late in life who reaches into you like he has lived there before
i am not talking about lust
‘This Fucking Love
lust is a bright bird striking itself against the dark glass of night beautiful frantic gone by morning
i am talking about the terrible holiness of someone learning your exhaustion by sight of someone hearing the difference between your public laugh and the real one of someone touching your leg like he is trying to calm an animal he does not want to scare away
this fucking love
has me feeling
like i could literally crawl out of my skin carrying this ache in my chest like contraband
at work at stoplights answering emails pretending to discuss ordinary things while internally an entire cathedral is collapsing in slow motion
because the body knows
the body knows when another body feels like home
and maybe that is the most frightening part
not that this love appeared but that after all these years all this surviving all this pretending to be beyond devastation
As if longing sounds less dangerous when folded into ordinary language
And maybe for some people it does
Maybe some hearts were taught survival before confession
I used to think harbors were built for ship for battered things dragging entire storms behind them for vessels returning at impossible hours and their lights barely surviving the fog
But now I think a harbor is simply what happens when something weary finally finds the one place it can soften
Maybe that is why you keep asking
Where I am
Not because you need directions
But because somewhere inside you my existence has become a shoreline
something your spirit checks for before resting
So now when I think of harbors I no longer imagine docks or boats
I imagine two people finding shelter inside the sound of each other’s voice
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
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
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
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.
you come from a woman from a body that carried you without question, from hands that knew you before you spoke, from a kind of care you never had to ask for
you were held before you understood what holding was, fed before you knew hunger, loved before you knew how to return it
you were soothed when you didn’t understand your own discomfort you were seen before you knew how to be seen, you were answered before you knew how to ask
and then you grow into a world that teaches you distance teaches you how to move forward, how to leave, how to harden, how to forget what it felt like to be kept
and you come back to us as men standing in front of women as if we are something new, something to figure out, something to reach
but we are not new
we are the same place you once lived inside
so why do you do this
why do you stand so close and still not see us
why do you reach without knowing what you’re reaching for
why do you touch without understanding what you’re holding
why do you move through us as if we are surface
not all of you but most of you
and it repeats
the same distance the same absence the same quiet disconnect as if something in you chose forgetting over remembering
because you don’t know us
not the way we feel you before you speak
not the way we notice what you don’t say
not the way we hold what passes through you without you ever stopping to see it
we feel your hesitation your distraction, your presence when it’s real and your absence when it isn’t
we feel when you arrive and when you don’t
and still
we are expected to remain
as if closeness is something that happens just because you are near
but it is not
it is as if you forgot completely what it was like to be known without asking, to be cared for without earning it, to be held without having to arrive
and now you move through us as if we are surface—but we are not
we are still that same quiet place, still able to hold, still able to know
still capable of seeing you in ways you don’t yet —see yourself
but no longer willing to be forgotten while you stand inside us
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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