Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: heartbreak

  • 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.

  • 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.