Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: confessional poetry

  • The Synchronicities of Panic

    Bricks. Roof. Trees. Sky.
    Beige. Green. Blue. White.

    Four tangible things.

    I was taught this fifteen years ago, and somehow I have carried it everywhere since. When panic comes, look outward. Name what is real. Give the mind something it cannot argue with.

    A roof is a roof. A tree is a tree. The sky is blue.

    Start there.

    Inhale slowly. Exhale longer.

    Again.

    Panic is strange because even when you know exactly what it is, your body does not care.

    My mind says, I know this feeling.

    My body takes longer to trust me.

    So I pull over.

    I park beneath a tree, lean the seat back, and wait. Because that is what you do. You wait for your body to catch up with what your mind already knows.

    You are okay.
    You are okay.
    You are okay.

    And then panic does this other strange thing to me.

    It takes me backward. Not to one particular day, but to that old maternal terror of loving something I cannot control.

    That fear.

    The one that says, fix it, fix it, fix it, even when there is nothing you can fix in that exact second.

    It makes me younger somehow.

    Not in years.
    In fear.

    So I do not follow it there.

    Bricks. Roof. Trees. Sky.

    Come back.

    There is a bird in the tree above me. I watch it flap its wings, chirp, move from one branch to another. Its entire purpose, for that moment, is exactly that.

    And I envy it.

    Not because it is free.

    Because it is only where it is.

    No yesterday. No next thing. No inventory of everything that could go wrong.

    Just branch.
    Wing.
    Sound.
    Gone.

    Birds are fleeting that way.

    Maybe that is why I notice them when I am afraid. They arrive without explanation and leave before I can ask anything of them.

    And for a second, I follow that instead.

    My breathing gets better. I can feel myself coming back into my body.

    And then I cry.

    Not because I am more afraid.

    Because I am not.

    Because sometimes after all that fear, there is nowhere for it to go except out.

    So I let it.

    I write this down quickly because later I know what I will do. I will be fine. I will get up. I will drive. I will go do whatever comes next.

    And I will say, I had a panic attack, as though those four words could possibly explain what it felt like while I was inside it.

    So I write it now.

    Before I make it smaller.
    Before I forget the fear.
    Before I forget the relief.

    The tree.
    The breath.
    The bird.

    Bricks. Roof. Trees. Sky.

    Come back.

    The bird lifts from the branch.

    And I do too.

  • Heel Against the Dark

    My mother says I started kicking early.

    By six months
    I was restless enough
    that she was sure I was a boy.

    She did not know.

    She only knew
    there was something inside her
    that would not be still.

    Sometimes I think about that
    and feel tired
    all the way back to the womb.

    As if I arrived here already working.
    Already pushing.
    Already trying to make more room
    than there was.

    Before I had opened my eyes
    before air
    before language
    before anybody had asked anything of me—

    I was moving.

    Heel against the dark.

    Again.

    Again.

    Again.

    Maybe that is why rest
    has always felt slightly unnatural to me.

    Like I have forgotten something.

    Like somewhere
    there is a door unlocked
    a problem awake
    a person waiting
    a thing I should be carrying.

    I have spent so much of my life
    with my hands full
    that I do not know
    what they look like empty.

    I solve.
    I hold.
    I stay.

    I lie awake beside problems
    as if they have fevers.

    Turn them over.
    Touch their forehead.
    Listen for breathing.

    And when they do not tell me what is wrong

    I stay anyway.

    People call women like this strong.

    I think sometimes
    that is just what they call us
    when they have become accustomed
    to watching us carry things.

    They stop seeing the weight.

    They see only
    that we have not dropped it.

    Maybe I have been doing this
    longer than anyone knows.

    My mother
    hand against her stomach
    feeling me kick
    and kick
    and kick

    thinking
    there must be a son in there.

    No.

    It was me.

    Already exhausted
    from trying to move a wall
    with a foot the size of a plum.

    God.

    Imagine being that small
    and already believing
    something has to give.

    Imagine having no language for being trapped
    no idea what survival is

    and still
    your body knows:

    push.

    Tonight I do not feel strong.

    I do not feel brave.

    I feel ancient
    in a way that has nothing to do
    with years.

    I feel tired
    from before my own beginning.

    As if somewhere inside me
    that unborn self is still awake

    still pressing a heel
    into the dark

    not asking anymore
    if there is room—

    only pressing

    as if the body
    has always known

    that sometimes
    the only way
    to survive a wall

    is to keep becoming
    against it.

  • Before It Had to Be Named

    I have never told a man
    I loved him first.

    Not because I didn’t.

    Because I believed
    love should recognize itself
    before it had to be named.

    I thought if it was true,
    it would arrive on your lips
    before it ever reached mine.

    Then you happened.

    For the first time,
    I wanted to say it.

    I carried those words
    like water in my mouth,
    afraid that if I spoke,
    I would lose
    both the water
    and the thirst.

    So I said nothing.

    Instead, I loved you like the wind—

    the wind that finds your face
    before you have opened your eyes,

    that moves through your hair
    and catches in your breath,

    leaving you to wonder
    what your heart remembered
    that your mind could not name.

    It hurts to love you
    because the feeling is real
    and has nowhere to go.

    No place in your life
    where it can remain.

    So I carry it into mornings,
    into songs I cannot finish,
    into every quiet place
    that still makes room for you.

    I have questioned everything else—

    my judgment,
    my timing,
    the meaning of your silence.

    But never this.

    Never the love.

    I only wanted one impossible thing:

    for you to know
    that somewhere in this world,

    you were loved
    by a woman who had never told a man
    she loved him first—

    and still could not bring herself
    to tell you.

    So if, on some ordinary morning,
    the wind finds your face,

    lingers for just a moment
    and catches in your breath—

    let it be enough.

    Let it carry the words
    I could not.

  • Before Her Voice Was Air

    Do you remember being a fetus?

    Neither do I.

    But once
    I lived inside my mother.

    I knew her first
    without seeing her.

    The sound of blood moving.
    Her heart somewhere above me.

    The strange underwater version
    of her voice.

    I wonder what laughter sounded like
    from in there.

    Whether it shook the water.

    Whether sadness did too.

    Whether I knew the difference.

    When she walked,
    the whole world moved.

    When she slept,
    I disappeared into her sleep.

    I went everywhere she went
    without knowing
    there was anywhere else to go.

    I had never seen light.

    Never felt air
    against my skin.

    Never been alone.

    I knew her
    before I knew what a mother was.

    Before I knew
    there could be distance
    between one body
    and another.

    There must have been
    a last night inside her.

    This is the part
    I keep thinking about.

    A last night
    when I still lived
    entirely inside another person,

    and neither of us
    called it goodbye.

    Then morning came.

    And for the first time,

    her voice
    was no longer underwater.

  • I Never Let Her Exist

    Sometimes I am tired of being me.

    I have been with myself
    for as long as I can remember,
    and I have never learned
    how to leave myself alone.

    I notice everything.

    A change in someone’s voice.
    A silence that lasts too long.
    Something I said three days ago
    that no one else remembers.

    I return to things
    that have already ended
    as though there might be something there
    I missed the first time.

    There usually is.

    That is part of the problem.

    I have made myself uncomfortable
    for as long as I can remember.

    I don’t know when I began
    watching myself this closely.

    I am tired of my own reflection,
    not because I hate the woman in it,
    but because I never simply let her exist.

    I am always doing something to her.

    Fixing.
    Forgiving.
    Remembering.
    Reconsidering.

    Even inside my own body,
    I move the furniture.

    I turn her face toward the light
    and then away from it.

    I look too closely.

    At my face.
    My body.
    My age.
    The things I should have done differently.
    The people I should have stopped missing
    a long time ago.

    Nothing in me
    is ever allowed to simply be.

    Not even happiness.

    I examine that too.

    How long will it last?
    What will ruin it?
    Who will leave?

    I ask too much of her.

    Be younger.
    Be wiser.
    Be less afraid.

    Stop missing people
    who can live without you.

    Stop needing answers
    from people who have chosen silence.

    Stop going back
    to the exact place something hurt
    just to see if it still does.

    It does.

    I go back anyway.

    Sometimes I wonder
    when I became someone
    I was responsible for correcting.

    When did I stop being a person
    and become a problem
    I was always trying to solve?

    She has carried every version of me
    without ever being allowed
    to put one down.

    And still,

    I stand in front of her
    looking for what needs fixing.

    She must be exhausted.

    I know I am.

  • Look at Yourself

    I have been thinking about the terrible fact
    that people can become unreachable
    while still being alive.

    There should be another word for this.

    Death is too complete.

    This is something else.

    This is knowing someone is somewhere
    washing their hands,
    looking for their keys,
    standing in front of an open refrigerator
    deciding what they want—

    and not knowing
    if you cross their mind at all.

    And why do I torture myself this way?

    As if I cannot see myself in a mirror.

    As if I need someone else’s eyes
    to tell me I am still here.

    I stand in front of myself every morning.

    Same face.
    Same mouth.

    Same body that has carried me
    through every terrible thing
    I was certain would finish me.

    And still,

    one person’s silence
    can make me question
    everything I know about myself.

    This embarrasses me.

    Not because I loved.

    I have never been ashamed of that.

    But because I keep returning to the silence
    as if it contains an answer.

    Was I too much.
    Was I not enough.

    Was it my body.

    Did something in me become disappointing
    once it became real.

    Look at me.

    I want to say this to myself.

    Look at yourself.

    You have a mirror.

    You have lived inside this body
    for more than half a century.

    You know what it survived.

    You know how many times
    it had to become yours again.

    And still,

    I stand there

    looking directly at myself

    and somehow

    I am waiting for someone
    who is not here

    to tell me

    what he sees.

  • With a Match

    I once believed in a bay leaf.

    I wrote what I wanted
    on its dry green body.

    A name.
    A wish.
    Sometimes only a word.

    Then I burned it.

    I watched the edges curl inward
    the leaf blacken
    the handwriting vanish
    before the wish did.

    I have believed in candles.
    In numbers appearing twice.
    In dreams arriving before dawn.
    In songs playing at exactly the wrong moment
    and therefore meaning something.

    I have asked the dead for signs.

    I have left coffee
    where no living person would drink it.

    But the bay leaf—

    I believed in that one.

    Maybe because it came from the kitchen.

    Because it was ordinary.

    Because it had spent its whole life
    being dropped into pots
    to make something taste deeper
    without ever being eaten.

    There are things I wrote on those leaves
    that never came true.

    People who did not stay.

    Doors that remained closed.

    Bodies that did not heal.

    Love that arrived
    and still could not belong to me.

    I used to wonder
    if I had done something wrong.

    Used the wrong ink.

    Burned it incorrectly.

    Asked for too much.

    Still—

    every once in a while
    I open the cabinet
    and see the little glass jar.

    Dry leaves
    pressed against one another.

    Quiet.

    Waiting.

    And for one second
    I become the woman I was—

    the one who believed
    the distance between wanting something
    and having it

    could be crossed

    with a match.

  • I Was Left Without One

  • Stanza Is the Bone

    A stanza is the bone.

    Nothing—
    not even a life—
    can be carried
    all at once.

    Everything else
    is me
    trying not to come apart
    in public.

    My hand around my ankle

    like I am keeping

    some part of me

    from leaving.

    My body
    wrapped in denim.

    My whole life
    pretending
    this is just a way
    to sit.

    I feel
    so temporary.

    The bracelet.

    The shoe.

    The watercolor flowers
    beneath my skin.

    I needed evidence

    that I was here.

    That I could drown
    inside myself

    and still come up
    breathing.

  • Point of Entry

    People ask me about technique.

    I disappoint them.

    I have never sat down
    to write a poem
    thinking about meter
    or form
    or whether the line
    should break here
    instead of there.

    That does not mean
    those things do not matter.

    It means they were never
    my point of entry.

    I don’t write
    because I understand
    what I’m feeling.

    I write
    because I don’t.

    I don’t know where a poem begins.

    I only know
    that sometimes
    I write a sentence
    and spend years
    becoming the person
    who can understand it.

    Maybe that is where the poem begins.

    Not in clarity.

    In the private disorder
    language has not yet learned
    how to hold.

    The poem arrives before the explanation.

    Before the lesson.

    Before the clean version
    people prefer
    after pain has been made useful.

    I do not trust that version.

    I trust the fragment.

    The unfinished sentence.

    The line that breaks
    because something in me
    cannot continue
    without silence.

    That is technique too.

    Not the kind I studied.

    The kind the body invents
    when the mind
    has no argument left.

    The poem knows before I do.

    It knows where I am hiding.

    It knows what I am circling.

    It knows the truth
    before I can survive
    saying it plainly.

    That is why I write this way.

    Not to confess.

    Confession suggests
    I have arrived somewhere
    with evidence in my hands.

    Most of the time
    I have not arrived.

    Most of the time
    I am still standing
    inside the question.

    And the poem—
    if it is honest—
    does not answer it.

    It simply stays there
    with me

    long enough
    for something true
    to recognize itself.

  • No Patience for Plath

    My mother says I cannot speak like a normal person. She says every conversation with me turns into a metaphor with no parking.

    “Talk to me like a human being,” she says. “I don’t need a poem. I asked you a question.”

    And I laugh, because she is right.

    Then I tell her, “Well, I’m not human. So why would I speak to you like one?”

    This, of course, does not help.

    She looks at me like I have personally insulted common sense.

    “Enough.”

    “Speak normally.”

    But somewhere along the way, my thoughts stopped walking in straight lines. They started taking the scenic route, turning left where everyone else would have simply answered.

    And please understand—

    this is incredibly amusing to me.

    Because my mother is not a woman without language. No. My mother has language. She can say one sentence and make it sound like a door being thrown open during a storm.

    So when she tells me not to speak in poetry, do you understand how funny that is?

    This woman, who can slice the air with one sentence, wants me to hand her plain bread.

    I own the entire collection of Sylvia Plath.

    Every book.

    Every page.

    Every bruise.

    I have not opened a single one in over a decade. Not because I stopped admiring her. I didn’t.

    It is just that somewhere along the way, those books became less about Sylvia Plath and more about my mother.

    Once, while we were rearranging books, I left my Sylvia Plath collection on the coffee table. My mother and I both own a ridiculous number of books, but I do not write in mine. I do not underline. I leave the pages alone.

    So when I came back and saw ink on Sylvia Plath, I almost left my body.

    My mother had underlined things.

    Not gently.

    Not in pencil.

    Ink.

    On the page.

    In my book.

    As if Sylvia Plath had not already suffered enough.

    Then she looked at me and asked, “Does this make any sense to you?”

    And I said, “Well, you have to look at her from where she was standing.”

    My mother shook her head.

    “This is the most heartbreaking thing. There is no joy in these books.”

    And I was upset.

    Obviously.

    Because again,

    actual ink.

    But I also laughed, because somehow my mother had managed to vandalize Sylvia Plath and prove my entire point at the same time.

    Ever since that day, I have quoted Sylvia Plath to my mother every chance I get. Not because I’m feeling particularly Plath-like. Not always.

    Sometimes I do it simply because she underlined my books.

    This is what you get.

    You touch my Sylvia Plath, and now you have to live with Sylvia Plath.

    Forever.

    Every now and then, she’ll ask, “What are you doing today? What plans do you have?”

    And instead of saying work, errands, laundry, coffee, like a normal daughter, I’ll answer,

    “I desire the things which will destroy me in the end”

    She closes her eyes.

    And I smile, because she knows.

    This has nothing to do with today.

    This is an old debt.

    The punishment for underlining my books.

    And I have every intention of collecting it for the rest of her life.

    My mother has no patience for Sylvia Plath.

    To me, she is a poet.

    To my mother, she is a weather warning. A pressure drop. A room losing air. An anxiety rash waiting to happen.

    The kind of poet who makes my mother’s soul reach for antihistamines.

    Too much ache.

    Too much bell jar.

    Too much woman

    making pain
    answer back.

    So when my mother tells me not to speak in metaphors, I try.

    I really do.

    But I don’t know where normal ends and language begins.

    I have never been fluent
    in ordinary.

    My mind

    has always preferred

    the long way home.