Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: contemporary poetry

  • 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.

  • —

    I have tried
    to keep poetry
    as a pet.

    I gave it a place to sleep.

    I fed it
    the parts of myself
    I could not say
    without becoming unbearable.

    It ate everything.

    My mother’s aging.

    My father’s absence.

    The men I loved
    beyond the point of dignity.

    It ate the woman
    I used to be

    and came back hungry.

    Mine has ruined furniture.

    It has found every place
    I healed badly

    and slept inside it.

    It has dragged
    every version of me
    I buried

    back through the house

    leaving them
    at least my feet

    as if I should
    thank it.

    Sometimes
    it disappears.

    I search for it
    inside the silence

    under the bed

    behind every sentence
    I try to force
    into meaning.

    Nothing.

    I begin to wonder
    whether I have emptied myself
    so completely

    there is nothing left
    worth feeding anymore.

    Then I feel it move.

    Not gently.

    It has never bitten me.

    It simply waits
    until I call something healed

    then nudges it

    with one quiet word.

    Sometimes I think
    poetry isn’t eating me.

    It’s removing

    everything

    that isn’t mine.

    I open the door.

    It walks past me,

    carrying something of mine

    still trying
    to become
    a sentence.

    I spent years believing
    I was keeping poetry alive.

    It never wanted food.

    It wanted
    the woman
    who walked into the poem

    because it knew

    she would not be

    the one

    who walked out.

  • 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.

  • The Fourth Room

    My house has four rooms
    and I have mistaken each one
    for a chamber of the heart.

    The kitchen keeps what burns.
    The bedroom keeps what enters.
    The hallway keeps footsteps
    long after they are gone.

    The last room
    is always closed.

    I tell people
    it is storage.

    I tell myself
    the same thing.

    But sometimes at night
    I hear it beating—

    that low, stubborn sound
    inside the walls,

    keeping the whole house alive
    from a room
    I never open.

  • The First Light

    The first light.

    A cool sheet.

    A long stretch
    that no one sees.

    I never open my eyes
    right away.

    The light reaches my face

    and I let it.

    I don’t know
    when this became
    a ritual.

    My hands move
    over my neck
    my shoulders

    not to admire
    what is there

    but to arrive.

    It feels almost
    like when you give yourself
    to someone.

    Only there is no one.

    Just morning.

    Just light.

    Just my body
    believing, again

    that light

    has never lied to me.

  • Cloud Level

    I keep looking out the window

    because for once

    the world is beneath me.

    Not in a cruel way.

    Just enough

    to remind me

    I am still above

    something.