Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: Longing

  • 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.

  • Maybe

    If I could
    I’d paint you a sky
    low enough to reach.

    A sky without distance.

    Why?

    I don’t know.

    Maybe because I’ve spent
    an embarrassing amount of my life
    making myself comfortable
    inside things that weren’t good for me.

    Love, especially.

    The kind that asks you
    to become smaller
    so it can stay.

    The kind you keep calling love
    because you honestly don’t know
    what else to call
    the thing you can’t leave.

    Maybe that’s why
    I wanted the sky so low.

    Not because I wanted to reach you.

    Or maybe I did.

    I don’t know.

    Maybe I just wanted
    for once
    something I loved
    to be close enough
    that reaching for it
    didn’t hurt.

    And maybe that’s the whole point.

    Maybe I’ve spent too much of my life
    loving things
    that required me
    to hurt myself
    just to get close.

  • 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.

  • Inalterable

    I have spent so much time
    trying to become
    someone
    who didn’t love you.

    Nothing changed.

    Except
    the person
    trying.

  • 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.