Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: Birds

  • Redolence

    When I see birds
    I can almost smell them

    An odd thing to confess aloud

    They smell like a wound drizzled by morning rain
    like dust lifting softly from pavement after weather
    like roses still carrying the cold breath of dawn

    Not unpleasant

    Just painfully alive

    Ancient somehow

    As though feathers preserve memories
    the body spends years trying to outlive

    Strange how scent reaches the soul before thought does

    One breath
    and suddenly the past becomes physical again

    The ache gathering beneath the ribs
    the overwhelming feeling
    of having lost something beautiful long ago

    That invisible meeting place between longing and recognition

    The way certain scents return us
    not only to people
    but to former versions of ourselves

    Softer selves
    unguarded ones
    the selves that still believed tenderness
    could exist without disappearance attached to it

    And perhaps that is why birds unsettle me

    Because when they cross the evening sky
    carrying the fragrance of rain and distance and earth
    something inside me rises toward them instinctively

    Not joy exactly
    not sorrow either

    But the unbearable remembrance
    of who I was
    before longing became part of my nature

  • Captivity

    I am not obsessed with birds

    It is worse than that

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

    And perhaps
    that is why I keep watching them

    Not to study them

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

    Because what devastates me most
    is how beautiful their endangerment is

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

    There are birds
    who damage themselves quietly

    Not from storms

    From devotion

    In captivity some begin feather-plucking

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

    The beak returns
    again and again
    to the same tender place

    Chest
    Wing
    Breastbone

    Until the aviary floor
    becomes covered
    in the evidence of attachment

    I understand that now

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

    And still
    the bird continues singing

    That is the part
    that ruins me

    Not the wound

    The devotion surviving beneath it

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

    Because birds are creatures of imprinting

    Once attachment enters the nervous system
    the body remembers

    Migration paths
    Familiar calls at dusk
    The exact direction
    of returning

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

    Meanwhile
    my dignity survives quietly
    inside the attachment

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

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

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

    Not freedom

    But suspension

    The beauty of remaining airborne while exhaustion slowly enters the wings

    And perhaps
    that is what devotion truly is

    Not love at its beginning

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

  • Dignity lives here

    My dignity lives here

    In the first image
    where everything is still charcoal and restraint

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

    That was the beginning

    The sacred stage of longing

    The stage where silence
    still felt noble

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

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

    A lingering hand
    A familiar voice at dusk

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

    And I never asked
    the impossible question

    Stay . .

    Charcoal | Watercolor

    Then came the color

    The bruising

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

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

    And suddenly
    the longing was no longer contained

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    Charcoal | Watercolor 

    It spread through everything

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

    That is what these images are, I think

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

    At first
    the suffering is elegant

    Almost holy

    But grief is alive

    And living things
    eventually bleed through

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    Charcoal | Watercolor 

    So the bird darkens
    The colors deepen
    The silence grows teeth

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

    And still

    The bird continues singing

    That is the part
    that dismantles me

    Not that it is wounded

    But that it continues loving
    while wounded

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

    Some nights
    I want to tear myself free from it completely

    To become a bird myself

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

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

    Because I cannot remember
    ever loving like this before

    Not with this much ache

    Not with this much silence

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

    And perhaps
    that is the saddest thing
    about being human

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

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    charcoal | watercolor

  • 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

  • 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’