Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: literary poetry

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Notes

    I want to kiss you

    because silence
    has become too crowded
    inside me.

    Maybe

    if I reached
    your mouth

    I could finally learn

    the grammar

    of everything

    you refuse
    to say.