I look at this
and I don’t think
how beautiful.
I wonder
how much
the woman
who handed over the egg
had left
for herself.
Because in Cuba
even generosity
has a cost.
An egg
passed between two windows
is never
just an egg.
It is one woman
looking at another
and quietly deciding,
I’ll have one less today.
And still
my country
lives this way
loving
in the dark.
I thought God
would answer
with thunder.
Instead
God left me
with my own hands.
How cruel.
How holy.
To be placed
inside a life
that keeps breaking
and still feel
something in me
rise.
Not clean.
Not saved.
Not even brave.
Just this blue ache
dragging itself
out of the dark
one trembling line
at a time.
I have begged
without calling it begging.
I have reached
for things
that could not stay.
For people.
For mercy.
For proof
that I was not alone
inside my own body.
And still—
my hand rises.
As if some part of me
knows something
I keep forgetting.
As if love
left a signal
under my skin.
As if God
did not come down
because God
was already here
moving through
the ruin
teaching my own hands
how to reach me.
I gave him
my most precious sanctuaries
Not the bright rooms
Not the ones
where I laugh
pour coffee
answer the world
with my shoulders back
No
I gave him
the hidden rooms
The rooms
with no windows
The rooms
where I take off my name
And become only breath
only woman
only trembling
I gave him
the bed
where I vanish
from everyone
The silence
where I confess
without language
The body
I had spent years
calling back
from the dead
And he entered
softly
Almost reverently
As if some part of him
recognized
the altar
As if his hands
knew enough
to lower their voice
He knows reverence
That is what hurts
Then he left
And spoke to me
Of work
Of home
Of all the ordinary lives
waiting for him
outside my door
And I stood there
inside the room
he had already abandoned
Holding the ruins
of my own tenderness
Wondering
how a man
could enter a sanctuary
And not know
he had been kneeling
It never took much to fill my stomach.
I thought that was simply the way I was.
A small appetite.
A child satisfied easily.
Years later I understood that hunger had already been negotiated long before the plate reached me.
The women in my family were experts at subtraction.
A little less for themselves.
A little more for everyone else.
No announcements.
No speeches.
No visible sacrifice.
Just small adjustments made so often they became invisible.
A spoonful here.
A portion there.
A second helping quietly redirected.
The mathematics of survival.
I never noticed it as a child.
Children rarely do.
I thought food simply appeared.
I thought dinner was dinner.
I thought everyone lived this way.
I did not understand that somewhere between the kitchen and the table, someone had already decided I would eat first.
This was Cuba.
Not the Cuba in photographs.
Not the Cuba tourists carried home in their suitcases.
A society of shortages.
Food shortages.
Soap shortages.
Fuel shortages.
Power outages that arrived without warning.
The endless improvisation required to survive them.
And yet the women continued.
They always continued.
I remember entire aisles filled with Russian canned meat.
The same can.
Again and again.
Shelf after shelf.
As though variety itself had become a luxury.
As though eating anything else had ever been an option.
At the time none of it felt strange.
Children accept the reality they are given.
The astonishing becomes ordinary very quickly.
I remember ash being gathered and sifted through cloth until only the finest powder remained.
No splinters.
No debris.
Only a soft gray dust.
Then the dishes were washed with it.
Astonishing, but true.
The meal fed the family.
The fire cooked the meal.
The ashes cleaned the plates.
Nothing was wasted.
Not food.
Not labor.
Not a single useful thing.
I remember the ash beneath their fingernails.
The smell of smoke that never seemed to leave their clothes.
The certainty with which they moved through scarcity.
As though survival were not remarkable.
As though it were simply what morning required.
Looking back, I realize they treated themselves the same way.
Reducing here.
Stretching there.
Giving and giving until very little remained.
And somehow still finding enough to offer.
Perhaps that is why it never took much to fill my stomach.
I was eating from portions made larger by the hunger of women who loved me.
I miss these women.
More than I know how to explain.
Not because they were perfect.
Not because they never failed.
Because they understood things I am only now beginning to understand.
The quiet negotiations of love.
The invisible mathematics of survival.
The dignity of continuing.
I see every version of myself in them.
The woman who worries.
The woman who nurtures.
The woman who remembers.
The woman who gives more than she should.
The woman who keeps going.
Sometimes I think inheritance has very little to do with what we are given.
Perhaps inheritance is recognition.
The sudden realization that the people we miss never truly leave.
They remain in our gestures.
In our habits.
In the way we love.
In the way we endure.
Today I feel as though I lived a life only fiction could properly explain.
Not because it was tragic.
Not because it was beautiful.
Because it was both at once.
The kind of life where dishes were washed with ashes.
Where store shelves repeated the same can until repetition itself became abundance.
Where women performed miracles and called it chores.
The women in my family were made of salt.
The proof was everywhere.
In the sweat.
In the sea surrounding the island.
In the meals that appeared when there should have been none.
In the hands that gave more than they kept.
In the quiet arithmetic that took place before every meal.
And when I look closely enough, I find them everywhere.
Including myself.
I surrender to the sun
while the birds sing recklessly
through the trees
like they are drunk on oxygen and light
The swing moves softly beneath me
The breeze slips across my legs
the side of my face
warm and cool at once
touching me
with both hands
And suddenly
the whole afternoon feels romantic
the wind
the creaking wood
the gold light spilling through leaves
like heaven forgetting to close a door
For once
I do not want anything more
than this
I think something inside me
permanently altered
the day I left the hospital
with my oldest son in my arms
and nowhere to go afterward
My stomach stitched in perfect lines
The nurses speaking softly around me
as if tenderness alone
could disguise abandonment
Outside
families loaded cars carefully
Fathers adjusting blankets
Women leaning back into passenger seats
flowers resting in their laps
like proof
they had been carried gently
through the violence of becoming
And there I stood
holding my newborn
trying not to let humiliation
be the first thing he inherited from me
So I called a taxi
I remember the driver asking for the address
and the terrible realization washing over me
I did not even have a key
to enter my own home
God . .
Even now
all these years later
I can still feel
the animal panic of it
Not woman
Not wife
Not mother
Animal
A creature trying to shelter her newborn
from storm weather
with nothing but her own exhausted body
The taxi dropped us off quietly
and I remember standing there
holding my son against my chest
the evening air cooling the sweat on my skin
realizing I had nowhere to go
So my neighbor let us inside
And something about that moment
scarred me more deeply
than childbirth ever could
Because the physical pain was irrelevant
None of it compared
to the humiliation
of standing outside your own door
with a newborn in your arms
feeling less like a human being
and more like some stray cat
searching desperately for shelter
before nightfall
And the terrible part is
almost no one knew
Not my family
Not friends
Not even my son
Especially not my son
Because I refused
to poison his love for his father
with the truth of what happened
So I swallowed it
Quietly
Daily
For years
And perhaps that is where
the real scar formed
not in flesh
but in silence
The performance
God . .
how wickedly I fought
to preserve appearances after that
I became composed
Functional
Capable
I built warmth around my children
while privately feeling
like some weather-beaten creature
dragging itself through winter
on instinct alone
People praised my strength
They had no idea
strength sometimes looked like
crying silently in bathrooms
washing your face
then walking back in
because small eyes were watching
and you refused
to let them witness the storm
And maybe that is why
I dream of rooftops
Because roofs understand
what it means
to endure weather publicly
while splitting apart slowly underneath
Rain
Heat
Storms
Lightning
Still
from the street
they appear intact
Just like I did
But some nights
when the world quiets enough
I can still see her
that younger version of myself
stitched closed too quickly
holding a sleeping newborn
outside a locked door
already understanding
that survival
was no longer temporary
It was about to become
her native language
If I could
I would place every fear I have for my sons
inside a small wooden box
and leave it out in the yard
I think about that box often
I imagine it sitting there alone beneath the weather
the grass growing slowly around it
rainwater darkening the wood
August heat opening tiny cracks along the lid
A plain little box
holding all the unbearable parts of motherhood
At first
the box would have held small things
Fevers in the middle of the night
Tiny shoes by the door
The sound of them crying from another room
The terrible helplessness of hearing your child cough
while the whole dark house waits with you
Back then
I thought motherhood was about protecting
I did not yet understand
that motherhood is mostly about enduring
So the years passed
and the box grew heavier
Into it went first heartbreaks
Late-night drives
Silences
The fear that arrives when your children begin
walking further and further away from your arms
And now my sons are men
Men in uniform
Men standing inside realities
I cannot soften for them
So now the box holds oceans
It holds unanswered messages
It holds the terrible imagination of mothers
It holds the sound of a phone not ringing
It holds every silent prayer
I have whispered into the light
If I could
I would leave the box outside forever
I would let rain kneel over it through the night
Let thunder shake it open
Let wind carry pieces of my fear away
through the trees
I would let winter freeze it stiff
Let summer split the wood apart slowly
until the earth itself
began carrying some of the weight for me
Because I am tired
of carrying the box inside my body
Tired of setting it beside my coffee each morning
Tired of carrying it room to room invisibly
while the world continues normally around me
And still
when I close my eyes
the box becomes lighter again
Inside it
I find warm little hands clenched in mine
Their laughter moving through the hallway
Maybe that is the true shape of motherhood
a small wooden box
filled first with tenderness
then with fear
then with all the love in the world
a human being can no longer survive carrying alone
the smile in your children’s faces
that breaks you open
before you can protect yourself
the way morning comes anyway
pulling light across a room
you didn’t think you could get up in
the breath that stays
even when you wish it would stop
even when you are too tired to carry it
the small hand that finds yours in the dark
and believes without question—that you will be there the moment you realize
you have to be
the light on the wall
that doesn’t explain anything
and still feels like mercy
the yes you didn’t plan to say
the one that leaves you trembling
the one that keeps you here
the chair you leave empty
and still return to
as if something might come back
the strength you never asked for
but were given anyway
the quiet that holds you
when you are falling apart
and no one knows
the forgiveness
that comes back
after you swore you were done
the love
you keep giving
even after it breaks you
even after it leaves you
again
and again
the nights
you sit alone
holding everything together
and no one sees
and still
you hold
the way you keep showing up
even when it costs you everything
the way you still care
after learning how much it hurts
the way you make space
for others
when no one made it for you
the moment you whisper
I can’t do this
and do it anyway
the life you are building
even when it feels like nothing is forming
the quiet strength
of not leaving yourself
when everything in you
wants to disappear
God is this
this breaking
this holding
this staying, the part of you that will not give up even when you beg it to
the hope that is not gentle or easy but relentless, the force that keeps your hands open and your heart turning
the reason you are still here, still loving, still choosing, still… after everything, still
i saw myself
standing in the grocery line of my own life
hands full of things
i did not choose
no one tells you
how quietly it happens
how you keep saying yes
until your hands forget
what no —feels like
i watched myself swallow it—a bird
not the kind they print on curtains
but the ragged one
ink-splattered
off balance
with a wing
that can’t decide
if it is breaking
or beginning
i say bird
you say anxiety
the doctor says reflux
my mother says pray
my body says:
listen
behind the sternum
that almost-ache
that isn’t pain
that drop in the gut, that sudden remembering
you are alive
and not
where you thought
you would be
i have become
a species of almost-flight
i negotiate with gravity
in quiet rooms
and call it duty
some call it love
some call it
be reasonable
i have learned
the choreography of staying
how to smile
while something in me
paces
i saw a woman
that woman was me
setting a table for ghosts
one plate for my father
one for each son
in their uniform of distance
their chairs pulled out
but empty
and one
for the self
that slips out the back door
when no one is looking
she pours water
for all of them
her hands don’t shake
she does not drink
the bird in her chest
has feathers made of memory
a beak made of unfinished sentences
its claws
hook into the soft places
where decisions live
and the world keeps saying
be calm
be grateful
while the sky
indecent in its openness
says nothing
i ask it for instructions
it gives me none
only this:
witness
the bird does not die
when ignored
it grows patient
it grows precise
it learns your habits
it learns
how long you can stand yourself
and waits
for the moment
you mistake silence
for peace
and then
it moves
not loud
not dramatic
just enough
to ruin the lie
i am not telling you to leave
i am telling you to notice
the exact second
your breath changes
the pause
before you explain it away
the shift
you pretend not to feel
that . .
that is the hinge
that is where your life
opens
or stays closed
you are not broken
you are over-kept
over-held
over-explained
you are wings
taught to apologize for air
so stand there
in your kitchen
in your car
in the long corridor
of your thoughts
stand there
and feel it
the press
the pulse
the almost
the part of you
that still wants more
even now
call it bird
if you want
call it hunger
call it the refusal
to live
half a life
God is in the wrist
no, before the wrist
in that small electric yes
that happens before I move
I sit with paper like a woman with too many thoughts
He says nothing
Which is how I know it’s Him
Then—a line
It goes crooked on purpose
Leans into green
Like it’s remembering a forest
I’ve never seen but somehow miss
I try to fix it
He laughs in sunlight
Yellow breaks open
right through the middle of my doubt
Splits it clean, spills everywhere
He guides like that
Not neat
Not polite
Not asking if I’m ready just pushing light
through whatever part of me is still resisting being seen
My hand follows
like it’s been waiting its whole life to stop pretending it knows where it’s going —with one drop of color
I didn’t plan that reach
I didn’t plan anything
That’s the miracle
God is not in the finished piece
God is in the ruin of control
In the moment I let the brush wander and it doesn’t get lost
He was never waiting
at the end
He was in every mark
I almost didn’t make
I watched the sun hide
and the birds went after it
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
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
charcoal—comes from something that burned all the way through its excuses
no color to charm you
no gloss to lie for you
just carbon—the aftertaste of fire
sitting in your hand
like it knows exactly what you’re avoiding
I take it anyway
it dirties me first
before
I make a single mark
Good
I don’t trust anything
that lets me stay clean
It drags across the surface like it’s pulling something out not placing something down
a line—too honest
another—already arguing with me
there’s no fixing it
only facing it
press too hard—it snaps
hold back—it exposes the hesitation like a cracked voice
mid-sentence
it reads the body better than I do
every tremor
every second of doubt
every moment I almost chose to be careful instead of real
it keeps all of it
even when I erase
and I do
it leaves a smear like a fingerprint at a crime scene
you were here
you meant that
or you didn’t
but you touched it
charcoal doesn’t care
about pretty
about finished
about approval
it cares about contact
about that split second
when the hand stops negotiating and just goes
reckless
accurate
unprotected
it’s not drawing
it’s exposure
a slow stripping
of whatever polish
I thought I needed
until what’s left
isn’t impressive
isn’t composed
just true enough
to make me look away
and then look back
because that’s the trap
once you see it
you can’t unsee
the version of yourself
that showed up in the mark
not the curated one
the other one
the one that doesn’t ask
to be liked
only to be left
on the page
exactly as it is
dark
unfinished
and impossible
to clean off completely
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’
I step out of my home
and the wind, gentle and unhurried
Finds the curve of my spine
Like a hand remembering a shape it once held
The trees in their full green bodies
The sky without boundary
The birds
Writing their quick signatures across it
And I, too, am written there
I do not deny what stirs in me
I include it
This warmth that leans toward another
It belongs to the same order as sunlight
As breath
As the turning of the earth
I say there is love here
And the feeling is ethereal
Yet rooted
You take me the way the sun finds a flower that never learned its morning
Not with warmth, but with a patience that does not leave
I had grown used to the dark
The kind that settles into the root
Until even the idea of opening feels like a mistake
The garden did not question me
It let me remain folded into myself
Petal against petal, a small life no one could enter
And no one could ruin
It worked
Nothing reached me
Nothing stayed
I waited for the taking
I knew how it went—how anything that sees you open does not stop
So I held myself tighter
Closed even against the light
As if survival meant never being seen soft again
And still
Something in me began to give
Not bloom, never bloom
Just a slight failure in my keeping
A single petal loosening as if it had grown tired of protecting what no one had come for
I felt it like grief
Sharp, quiet, uninvited
The body remembering something it had buried to keep living
You saw it
And you did nothing
You did not reach
You did not take
You did not ask for more
You stayed as if that one small opening was already too much to ask of me
And that
That is what broke me
Because I had been taught that anything that stays will hurt you eventually
That love is only a slower kind of loss
But you
You stayed exactly where I left you
As if I did not have to give you anything else
And so
I opened a little more
Not for you
Not even for the light
But because, for the first time
I felt something I did not recognize
The absence of harm
And it was unbearable
Because it meant
I had been closed all this time for something that was not here
And now
I do not know how far I can open
I do not know if the dark will return
But something in me
Something small, tired, still alive
Keeps loosening despite it
Because you did not take me when you could have
Because you did not break me when I was already open enough to be broken
Because you stayed long enough for me to feel what it is to be held in the light
And not disappear
Tilt my throat to the sky
As if I belong to the sun
Not to be chosen
Not to be touched
But to be taken
By something
That does not ask
My name
But here
Light arrives
Like a blade
I do not flinch
I let it see me
And my pulse that has carried
Too many unsaid things
I have been quiet
In rooms
That did not deserve me
I have folded myself
Into smaller weather
I do not lower my face
I do not hide
The tender architecture
Of being alive
Half bright
This in between
Keeps me awake
As if all I ever wanted
Suddenly – was
No longer distant
Safe space to rest my head
A parenthesis made of rain
Irreducible amounts
In this immensity
Impossible
Becomes possible
Exquisitely
Like a rising sun
And it’s imperialcy
Orbits of grace
At the in’s of me
Right here
I fall
110
Times a day
Like something
That still glows
Tucked, under
A single address
My land of traumas
Heightened with fear
A place that holds
My childhood
So terrifyingly
Deciphering torment
And the inability
To seek help
From people
Who watch you
Fall, in less dirt
Painful terrains
This is Cuba – 1979
Martyrs of disguise
Making parenthood
Less fiable
As everyone
Is too busy
Surviving
Their
Own
Imprisonment
I’ve been
A lonely walker
For decades
This life
Has taught me
To believe
That above my name
There is a vacancy
A beautiful sky
With blue lips
That speak for me
Making peace
For the rest
Of my existence
Like a road
That is long
Yet spangled
A subtle lullaby
Bronzed
As the earth rotates
Such wonder
Touching a vain
Girl’s heart. . .
I once knew
How light was spent
Its trickling effects
As faith pointed
With a golden rod
My own despair
Sat in a womb of fear
Aware it was not science
My conscious inadvertently
Reversed millions of words
Narrowing it down to one
-God
Heavy lines
Mounted over me
These purple nights
Drowning super stars
Forgetting what it is to write
Phosphorus dynamite
Encircles and intertwines
Muting one decade at a time
My youngest flowers
Hem above the heavens
In unparalleled storms
As God landscapes
An elegy for the unborn
Stone COLD
Hold ON
You’re still STRONG
NERVE pain loneliness
I haven’t LEARNED anything
EXCEPT for the LINES across your FACE
MORE human, than YESTERDAY
My mercy
A need to substitute
My mouth, for a dream
Different homes
Pincushions for doorknobs
Damnit I love you
Fight for insight
God’s copyright
In this interior of light
My signature becomes
A wrath that requires no reason
Covers us in blue
In the instant
Of this instant
Memory invents
Another present
A circular courtyard
With superstitious
Flashes of light
Intended to cover
Every crack in our horizon
The eternities of a second
My whole life to solve
Pitiless searches for a body
To grow old with
Nameless sensations
Such a cruel thing
To miss the dead
With this immeasurable clarity
Like gravid drops of hope
Spinning over itself
Tirelessly, till we learn
How to love, again . .
We live in identical rooms
We blankly wake, we greet
From one balcony to another
Successively for a hundred years
Between now and tomorrow
We will spend the rest of our days
Growing gardens out of angry stars
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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