Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: emotional poetry

  • 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?

  • Absence

    I have learned to disappear without moving.

    My body stays.

    It sits in the chair.
    It answers when spoken to.
    It lifts a glass.
    It crosses one leg over the other.

    It knows how to imitate me.

    No one notices
    when I leave.

    Sometimes
    I hear my own voice
    from far away
    and wonder
    who taught it
    to continue without me.

    I can smile
    at exactly the right moment.

    I can touch your hand.

    I can look directly at you
    while something inside me
    keeps moving backward.

    I do not know
    where I go.

    Only that everything
    becomes more distant
    without moving an inch.

    The walls recede.
    Faces lose their edges.
    My name sounds
    like something
    I once answered to.

    And still

    my body remains.

    Patient.

    This is what frightens me:

    how little I am required
    for my own life
    to continue.

    Sometimes
    I catch myself in a mirror

    and for one second

    I do not recognize
    which one of us

    has been waiting.

  • Existential

    There are days
    when I cannot tell
    if I am living my life
    or simply standing inside it.

    Sometimes I need
    the weight of ordinary things—

    the counter beneath my hand
    the floor holding me up.

    I have loved people
    who made me question
    whether love was
    something we entered
    or something we survived.

    I have stood inside happiness
    and already mourned it.

    Maybe that is the
    terrifying beauty of it—

    to know something is alive
    and already feel
    the shape of its absence.

  • 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.