Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: emotional poetry

  • Three Lines

    I carried you
    like a glass of water
    through a burning house.

  • Years of Salt

    Once I found your laughter
    inside an empty glass.

    I put the glass to my mouth
    and tasted nothing.

    Still, I washed it
    and put it back in the cabinet.
    I did that for months.

    Sometimes I took it down
    just to see if anything had changed.

    Nothing ever had.

    But I knew your mouth had been there.
    Somehow, that was enough.

    One night I held it against my ear.

    Your voice, maybe.
    A breath.

    There was nothing.
    Just the glass.
    Just my own breathing
    coming back to me.

    After a while,
    I stopped taking it down.

    Years later, I found it behind the plates.

    I picked it up.

    For one second,
    I heard you laugh.

    I put the glass to my lips again.

    And this time—

    Salt.

    Not yours.

    Mine.

  • That Dot

    Did you miss me?

    I am that dot.

    The one your eye keeps finding
    even when you’re trying
    not to look.

    There are dots everywhere.

    And then there’s me.

    A little off.

    Not where I belong.
    Not part of the plan.

    Maybe that’s why
    you keep noticing me.

    Maybe that’s why
    you keep coming back.

    I am not the pattern.

    I am the flaw
    your eye keeps returning to.

    The thing you tell yourself
    doesn’t matter.

    The thing you think about
    anyway.

    I am that dot.

    The one you keep trying
    to look away from.

    The one that stays
    after you do.

  • Locked

    I left my keys
    in the lock
    all night

    then spent the morning
    looking for them.

    Are you dissociating
    like me

    or have we all
    started leaving
    before we go?

  • Blue Bicycle

    I want to live on a mountain
    where the mornings smell like wet stone
    pine split open by rain
    and cold earth.

    Where the windows stay open
    and the curtains move
    even when no one is touching them.

    No phone beside the bed.
    No little red numbers
    telling me who needs me.

    Just a blue bicycle
    leaning against the house
    its frame cold with morning
    one tire resting in the grass.

    I would leave before the sun
    came all the way over the ridge.

    The road would still be damp.

    My tires would press
    dark half-moons into it.

    There would be fog
    caught low between the trees
    and birds somewhere above me
    I could hear
    but not see.

    I would ride past wildflowers
    past fences silver with dew
    past places with no names.

    The air would taste green.

    It would sting my face
    and fill my lungs
    until there was no room left
    for anything else.

    No voices.

    No unfinished conversations.

    No one asking
    where I am.

    Only the small metallic click
    of the bicycle chain
    the soft crush of gravel
    my breath
    going in and out.

    I would have a small house
    higher up the mountain.

    A wooden table.
    A white cup.
    A bed beside an open window.

    At night
    the sheets would smell like wind.

    Sometimes rain
    would begin in the dark
    and I would wake
    to water tapping the roof
    and the whole mountain breathing
    outside my window.

    I think I would sleep differently there.

    Deep enough
    to forget myself.

    And every evening
    I would ride home
    while the light disappeared
    from the road.

    The trees would turn black first.

    Then the mountain.

    Then my hands
    on the handlebars.

    And for a few minutes
    there would be nothing in the world
    but the blue bicycle beneath me
    the smell of rain coming
    and one small light
    burning in the window ahead.

    Mine.

    I think
    I could be happy there.