Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: Longing

  • 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.

  • Look at Yourself

    I have been thinking about the terrible fact
    that people can become unreachable
    while still being alive.

    There should be another word for this.

    Death is too complete.

    This is something else.

    This is knowing someone is somewhere
    washing their hands,
    looking for their keys,
    standing in front of an open refrigerator
    deciding what they want—

    and not knowing
    if you cross their mind at all.

    And why do I torture myself this way?

    As if I cannot see myself in a mirror.

    As if I need someone else’s eyes
    to tell me I am still here.

    I stand in front of myself every morning.

    Same face.
    Same mouth.

    Same body that has carried me
    through every terrible thing
    I was certain would finish me.

    And still,

    one person’s silence
    can make me question
    everything I know about myself.

    This embarrasses me.

    Not because I loved.

    I have never been ashamed of that.

    But because I keep returning to the silence
    as if it contains an answer.

    Was I too much.
    Was I not enough.

    Was it my body.

    Did something in me become disappointing
    once it became real.

    Look at me.

    I want to say this to myself.

    Look at yourself.

    You have a mirror.

    You have lived inside this body
    for more than half a century.

    You know what it survived.

    You know how many times
    it had to become yours again.

    And still,

    I stand there

    looking directly at myself

    and somehow

    I am waiting for someone
    who is not here

    to tell me

    what he sees.

  • With a Match

    I once believed in a bay leaf.

    I wrote what I wanted
    on its dry green body.

    A name.
    A wish.
    Sometimes only a word.

    Then I burned it.

    I watched the edges curl inward
    the leaf blacken
    the handwriting vanish
    before the wish did.

    I have believed in candles.
    In numbers appearing twice.
    In dreams arriving before dawn.
    In songs playing at exactly the wrong moment
    and therefore meaning something.

    I have asked the dead for signs.

    I have left coffee
    where no living person would drink it.

    But the bay leaf—

    I believed in that one.

    Maybe because it came from the kitchen.

    Because it was ordinary.

    Because it had spent its whole life
    being dropped into pots
    to make something taste deeper
    without ever being eaten.

    There are things I wrote on those leaves
    that never came true.

    People who did not stay.

    Doors that remained closed.

    Bodies that did not heal.

    Love that arrived
    and still could not belong to me.

    I used to wonder
    if I had done something wrong.

    Used the wrong ink.

    Burned it incorrectly.

    Asked for too much.

    Still—

    every once in a while
    I open the cabinet
    and see the little glass jar.

    Dry leaves
    pressed against one another.

    Quiet.

    Waiting.

    And for one second
    I become the woman I was—

    the one who believed
    the distance between wanting something
    and having it

    could be crossed

    with a match.

  • 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.