Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: Love

  • The Hinge

    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 your want

    call it hunger

    call it the refusal
    to live
    half a life

  • you don’t know men

    you think I stay
    because I return to the same chair

    because my hands find you and you accept them without question

    you believe that is the whole of me

    You don’t know men (graphite)

    but you don’t know men

    you don’t know
    how a man can enter a room and nothing visible changes

    and yet something does
    a slight turning

    like a field responding to wind no one else feels

    I have watched it happen without meaning to notice

    there is something beautiful in them

    I have to say that

    the way they move with a kind of quiet certainty

    as if the ground has already agreed to hold them

    you would like that about him
    you already do

    you know the man who bends down to you

    who lets you lean into his hand

    who asks nothing more than the moment he is in

    you know only the man who pets you

    but you don’t know
    how those same hands can linger after they are gone

    for years he was simply someone I knew

    a presence that did not ask to be considered
    beyond what it was

    and then

    one day

    nothing happened

    and still
    something shifted

    I cannot show you where
    there is no place to point

    no beginning you could follow

    only a feeling

    like the first sign of weather before the sky changes

    you don’t know men
    how they can remain as they are

    and still become something else
    inside you

    now

    when he reaches
    I do not step away

    it is not that I don’t see it
    it is not that I don’t understand

    it is that something in me has already answered

    and afterward
    I carry it

    that is the part
    you would not understand

    how I return here

    sit beside you

    touch you as I always have

    and still feel
    what has passed through me

    not where it happened
    but where it stayed

    you understand the world as something that arrives and remains

    you understand what can be held

    but you don’t know
    how something can move through you

    and leave no place behind for itself

    and still be there

    you don’t know men

    how they can walk away
    with nothing in their hands

    and still leave something in yours

    and yet
    there is no anger in me

    only a quiet awareness

    that I am

    not as I was

    that something in me
    has opened

    and does not close as easily

    you look at me
    as though I am whole

    as though I belong entirely to what returns

    and I let you believe it

    because you do not know my language

    you do not know men

    and still

    I stay

    You don’t know men (graphite)

  • I stay

    you walk past me
    like you’re still carrying the outside in with you

    the door closes
    but it doesn’t take it with it

    keys fall
    bag falls
    your hands don’t

    they reach for paper
    like it won’t ask you anything back

    you don’t look at me
    not yet

    and I want to tell you

    it can wait

    you can sit first
    you can breathe

    but I don’t have that kind of voice

    so I stay quiet

    like always

    you work fast
    too fast

    like something is right behind you
    breathing
    calling your name
    in a voice you don’t answer

    I hear it

    I wish you could hear it
    the way I do

    but I can’t give it to you

    I can only watch
    as your hands press harder

    like pressure might fix it

    I have seen you in other lives

    same body
    different light

    this home has seen it too

    birthdays
    graduations
    deaths

    walls holding sound
    long after it leaves

    your sons became men

    one by one
    they walked out of these rooms

    carrying pieces of you with them

    the doors closed softer each time

    and the house learned
    how to be quiet

    you used to turn toward it

    now you turn inward

    and I

    I remember everything
    you don’t say out loud

    you move like a held breath

    like if you stop
    everything will rise at once

    I want to tell you
    it’s already there

    it’s not waiting

    but I am not made for words

    so I sit

    and breathe slow
    for both of us

    you go somewhere

    I know the place

    your body stays
    but you leave it

    your eyes change

    the room feels it

    I go with you

    I always go with you

    because I can

    because you don’t know how to stay there alone

    you give things up early

    like you’re afraid
    of what might stay

    I want to tell you

    not everything that stays
    hurts

    not everything that grows
    will take from you

    but I don’t have language

    only presence

    only this small body
    that follows you
    without question

    there are others

    I know them too

    the ones you don’t speak about but carry anyway

    I feel them
    in the way your breathing breaks
    in the way your hands hesitate
    over nothing

    I sit with you there

    I wish I could say
    their names with you

    I wish I could tell you
    they are still soft inside you

    but I can’t

    so I stay

    there are nights
    you are not here

    even when you are

    you sit in front of me
    but you are somewhere deeper

    and I want to call you back

    I want to say
    come here
    stay here
    with me

    but all I can do

    is walk closer

    sit beside you

    wait

    and then

    you come find me

    not because I called you

    but because something in you
    remembers

    my stillness
    my quiet
    my staying

    your hand reaches

    your body softens

    your breath returns

    and I feel it

    that moment
    when you come back into yourself

    I would tell you
    you don’t have to leave like that

    I would tell you
    you are safe here

    I would tell you
    you are still whole
    even when you feel like you are not

    but I was not made
    for your language

    so I stay

    where you can find me

    every time you forget
    where you are

    So I stay

  • Mid Flight

    I start with a line

    graphite—light
    almost unsure of itself

    because if I press too hard it becomes a commitment

    and I’ve spent years
    living inside commitments
    that didn’t fully belong to me

    I build it slowly

    short strokes
    adjustments
    erasures
    small negotiations with the page

    I try to find the shape
    something recognizable
    something that makes sense

    this is the part
    I was taught to trust

    the part that can be explained
    justified
    approved

    I hear his voice here

    clear
    decisive

    you can’t make a living with words
    you can’t make a life out of art

    so I learned

    to keep it contained

    to make it small enough
    to exist without threatening anything

    but it never stays

    somewhere in the middle

    my hand loosens

    not because I decide to

    because I can’t hold it anymore

    and that’s when I reach
    for water

    I let it fall

    not controlled
    not measured

    I let it touch the graphite
    and pull it outward

    and it spreads

    past the edges
    past the version
    that was acceptable

    past the place
    where I could still say

    this is just a drawing

    and I watch it

    because I know

    this part is not about skill

    this is release

    this is the place
    I was told
    not to trust

    words do the same thing

    they start contained
    careful
    edited
    safe

    and then

    they don’t

    they spill
    they move
    they say things
    I didn’t plan to admit

    and I come here

    again
    and again
    and again

    not because I’m searching

    because I cannot swallow it

    I tried

    for years

    to keep it inside
    to make a life
    that didn’t need this

    but something in me
    refused

    quietly

    consistently

    until it began to show up in my body

    in that pressure
    in that drop
    in those moments
    where everything looks fine

    and still

    something is missing

    this

    this is where it goes

    this page
    this space
    this place where I don’t have to explain
    or prove
    or justify

    this is where I am allowed
    to exist
    without translating myself

    the bird appears here

    or almost does

    mid-flight
    mid-fall
    mid-becoming

    I don’t try to fix it anymore

    I let it stay unclear

    because that’s the only way it feels honest

    I used to think

    if it couldn’t be something
    I could live from

    it wasn’t worth this

    this time
    this attention
    this need

    but now

    I see it differently

    this isn’t about making a living

    this is about not disappearing

    this is about giving shape to something in me that will not stay silent

    and every time
    I let it out

    in lines
    in water
    in words

    something in me
    settles

    not completely

    never completely

    but enough

    to breathe

    and maybe that’s what this is

    not a career
    not a plan

    a place

    where I don’t have to hold it all

    where I can let it move

    where I can let it be seen

    where I can stop pretending

    it isn’t there

    and that

    that is why

    I keep coming back

  • Held

    God is in the wrist
    no, before the wrist
    in that small electric yes
    that happens before I move

    Pencil

    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

    Watercolor

    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

    Watercolor

    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

    The Woodlands, Texas

  • Omissions III

    you don’t say it
    but it rides shotgun anyway

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    window down, elbow out, that quiet between us doing all the talking like a highway that forgot where it was going

    you ever notice that?

    how a thing can live
    without ever being born—just pacing the inside of your chest like a stray that found the door
    but won’t come in —that’s us

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    you trim the truth
    like a man shaving in bad light

    leave just enough shadow to look like something real

    and I sit there—feeling the weight of it

    I become a sound you almost say and then don’t—and it echoes louder than if you had

    that’s where I live with you

    in the almost
    in the inch before contact
    in the breath you take
    right before you decide not to cross it

    and it’s not that you don’t feel it

    I’ve seen it
    in the way your voice slows down
    like it’s trying not to wake something up

    in the way you stay too long for a man who’s just passing through

    you linger like a question you already know the answer to
    but won’t ask

    and me

    I let it happen
    I let the silence build a house around us
    no doors
    no windows
    just walls made of everything we won’t admit

    funny thing is
    it feels warm in there

    safe, almost

    until it doesn’t

    until you leave
    and the air changes
    and I’m standing in the middle of something
    that never had a name

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    trying to explain to myself how something so present can still be missing

    how a man can hold you
    without ever really touching you

    how omission
    quiet, careful, deliberate omission

    can feel more intimate
    than truth

    and here’s the part that stays

    not you
    you go, you always go
    back to the life that has edges, definitions, doors that close

    but this—this unfinished thing this almost this sentence that refuses its period

    it lingers

    in the coffee cup you didn’t finish
    in the chair that still leans toward me
    in the air that remembers the shape of your voice

    and I

    I finally see it for what it is

    not love
    not absence

    but a corridor

    long, dim, echoing
    where we met halfway
    and decided
    without saying it

    to never reach the end

  • Afterlight

    I watched the sun hide
    and the birds went after it

    Habit of following

    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

    Habit of following

    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

  • You come from us

    you come from a woman from a body that carried you without question, from hands that knew you before you spoke, from a kind of care you never had to ask for

    you were held before you understood what holding was, fed before you knew hunger, loved before you knew how to return it

    you were soothed when you didn’t understand your own discomfort
    you were seen before you knew how to be seen, you were answered before you knew how to ask

    and then you grow into a world that teaches you distance teaches you how to move forward, how to leave, how to harden, how to forget what it felt like to be kept

    and you come back to us as men standing in front of women as if we are something new, something to figure out, something to reach

    but we are not new

    we are the same place you once lived inside

    so why do you do this

    why do you stand so close and still not see us

    why do you reach
    without knowing what you’re reaching for

    why do you touch without understanding what you’re holding

    why do you move through us as if we are surface

    not all of you
    but most of you

    and it repeats

    the same distance
    the same absence
    the same quiet disconnect
    as if something in you
    chose forgetting
    over remembering

    because you don’t know us

    not the way we feel you before you speak

    not the way we notice what you don’t say

    not the way we hold what passes through you without you ever stopping to see it

    we feel your hesitation your distraction, your presence when it’s real
    and your absence when it isn’t

    we feel when you arrive
    and when you don’t

    and still

    we are expected to remain

    as if closeness is something that happens
    just because you are near

    but it is not

    it is as if you forgot completely what it was like to be known without asking, to be cared for without earning it, to be held without having to arrive

    and now you move through us as if we are surface—but we are not

    we are still that same quiet place, still able to hold, still able to know

    still capable of seeing you in ways you don’t yet —see yourself

    but no longer willing
    to be forgotten
    while you stand inside us

    you come from us

    and still

    you don’t remember

    how to see us
    how to feel us
    how to meet us

    in the very way
    we once held you

  • Charcoal Nerve

    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

  • Nowhere to Land

    what do I do with this

    please tell me

    what does a woman do
    when a man can sit in front of her feel everything

    and then walk out of it like it never asked anything of him

    what do I do with it

    when the body won’t settle

    when the hands won’t rest

    when something in me feels slightly outside of itself

    like I’m watching
    my own mind
    try to make sense of you

    of the way you stayed
    and didn’t stay

    of the way something opened and you closed it
    without even touching it

    what have you done

    no—what has this done

    because it sits in me like something unfinished
    like something that refuses to find a place

    and I keep going back to the same few seconds

    the same shift the same moment you became someone else without moving

    and I’m here
    holding both versions the one who leaned in

    And the one
    who looked at me after
    like nothing had crossed

    and it makes me feel

    ill

    not sick
    not broken

    just… off

    like something in me
    knows this mattered

    and something in you
    wouldn’t stay

    and I don’t know
    how to put that down

    I don’t know
    how to return

    because —I have left before

    I have walked away
    from things that broke me

    I know how to go

    I know how to close a door

    but this

    this feels like something
    I stepped into

    that won’t let me out and there’s this thought
    I can’t quiet

    what if I made it all up

    what if it only ever lived
    on my side

    and still

    even with that

    I can’t walk away

    because I didn’t imagine
    the feeling

    I felt it—fully

    and maybe that’s it

    maybe I went all the way in and you didn’t stay there

    and now I’m left with something that feels real

    but has nowhere to land and tonight —I tried to draw it and my hands trembled

    like they knew before I did— what I was touching

    and I had to stop

    because something in it made me nauseous

    like seeing it outside of me

    made it undeniable

    and now—there’s nowhere to put it back

    so I come here to digitally cure myself

    and still —it stays awake in me and I keep thinking how can you sleep

    how can you sleep
    knowing this

    or not knowing it at all

    how can you close your eyes when something like this

    is still moving in me

    Nowhere to Land

  • Living Inside Movement

    (2:00 a.m.)

    I wasn’t trying to write.

    I picked up charcoal
    because I needed somewhere to put it.

    Whatever this is. Just lines. Nothing finished. Nothing that stays still long enough to make sense.

    I kept trying to shape it
    into something I could recognize.

    Couldn’t.

    Every time I thought I had it—It moved.

    So I stopped trying to make it look like anything.

    Just let my hand follow it. That’s when it felt closer.

    Not right—just… closer.

    Same thing here.

    I’m not writing to explain it. I don’t even think I can.

    I’m writing because it won’t sit still inside me.

    Because it keeps happening and then disappearing like it was never there.

    And I’m left with it
    Whatever’s left of it
    trying to hold onto something that doesn’t hold back.

    So this isn’t a story.

    It’s not even a thought all the way through.

    It’s just me trying to catch something in the moment it almost becomes real.

    Before it moves again.

    ‘Living Inside Movement’

    I keep seeing you
    in the middle of things

    Never where anything starts, never where anything ends

    You just show up, and I let you

    Like it’s something I agreed to a long time ago without realizing it

    We talk—we always talk—about everything that doesn’t matter

    Because the one thing that does would change everything

    And we’re not willing to do that

    So we don’t

    We just stay here
    Living inside movement,
    letting it keep going
    because stopping it
    would force it to become something real

    And I think that’s
    what’s wearing me down

    Not you
    Not even this

    Just the way
    it never gets to land the way I feel it and then have to pretend
    I don’t

    The way you look at me
    like something is there
    and then leave like nothing is

    I don’t think you’re lying

    I think

    You’ve learned
    how to live inside it
    without letting it touch
    the parts of your life
    that would break

    I haven’t

    And maybe that’s the difference between us

    You go back to something solid, something defined,
    something that makes sense to the world

    And I stay here—in something that only exists when you’re standing in front of me

    And I hate that sometimes

    I hate how real it feels
    when you’re here, and how quickly it disappears when you’re not

    I hate that I’ve learned
    how to adjust to that

    How to hold it without asking for more

    Without asking you to choose it

    And I’m tired

    Not loudly—Not in a way anyone would see

    Just in that quiet place
    where something keeps going long after it should have stopped

    And still—I stay

    Not because I don’t know better

    Not because I’m waiting

    But because something in me still believes
    this isn’t nothing

    That it matters in some way that doesn’t have a place to exist

    So I stay—in something that moves, but never arrives

    And maybe one day
    I’ll get tired enough
    to step out of it

    Or maybe I won’t

    Maybe I’ll just keep
    living here—in this quiet, unfinished space

    Where something real
    keeps happening
    without ever becoming anything

    I can call mine

  • NightBird

    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’

  • Metáfora II

    It is the precise hand that separates me

    From what I was permitted to name

    And what I have always known beneath the visible

    I say – body’
    and mean a threshold

    Just a place where things pass through
    whether I consent or not

    I say ‘silence’
    and mean a room
    that remembers everything

    I say ‘love’

    and mean the undoing
    though I’ve called it other things to make it easier to keep

    And here in saying one thing and meaning another

    I begin to breathe not freely but sufficiently

    As though metaphor
    does the work for me

    As though air is easier to accept when it arrives
    in disguise

    I do not take the world
    as it is

    I take it as something adjacent, tide, light

    A turning I can tolerate and in that adjustment
    it becomes manageable

    Almost beautiful

    And I

    Still composed, still intact in appearance

    Open just enough to continue

    Without having to call it
    what it is

  • Metáfora

    My thoughts wander

    Barefoot and unashamed

    I say ‘leaf’

    And I mean

    The whole earth unfolding

    I say ‘breath’

    And I mean

    The shared air of all who have live for me

    Nothing is singular here

    Nothing stands alone

    Metaphor is my great companion

    It walks beside me

    Unbuttoned

    Unafraid

    Naming the world twice

    So I may know it

    Once more deeply

    It takes the smallest thing in my hands

    And makes it vast

    A blade of grass

    A pulse

    Leaving me forever altered

    And in love

    Because, love is

    The rupture
    The bright unignorable incision that renders the literal, impossible

    It is the precise hand
    that separates me
    from the wound

    And from the words
    that attempt to dress it

    I am not the wound
    I am not the language
    that softens it

    I am the edge

    And

    The exact place of entry

  • Art of Keeping

    Unveil me

    And call this moment truth

    Or what you will

    I have been so many things
    A voice that softened itself
    A silence that learned to endure
    A hand that held
    more than it was meant to carry

    I have been a bird
    Singing in red
    A wound that would not close

    I gathered myself inward
    Folded light into smaller shapes
    Asked what hurt
    to become less visible

    But it remained

    Not louder just closer

    So I stopped asking it

    To disappear

    I let it stand as it is

    Unhidden
    Unresolved
    And still reaching

    Learning

    The careful art of keeping

  • Fluency

    what removed me
    from solitude

    entered with
    wings half-lit

    it gathered in my mouth

    symbols forming

    against the soft interior
    of my speech

    my afflictions
    between hairline and skull

    became fluent

    abundant
    uncontained

    loving me

    like a man
    who knows his darkness

    well enough
    to let it breathe

    outside of him

    visible
    unhidden

    still reaching
    toward light

  • Love Lives Here

    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

  • Woman

    You ask me why I love being a woman.

    I could speak of the ways we are taught to tend.

    To hold, to soften.

    A rocking chair postured in selflessness.

    Moving for others, rarely for itself.

    That is one truth, but not the only one.

    There is a fullness I came to. Without asking.

    Not given, not earned, something that lived in me long before I knew
    how to name it.

    The fullness I carry
    belongs to no one
    who might touch me.

    It is not awakened, it does not wait.

    I have lived in opposition to my own shape, called it discipline, called it virtue.

    Until even silence grew tired of my resistance.

    Now there is no argument.

    My body

    Stands, soft, unrevised.

    If I am loved, it is incidental, a passing light through a room
    already lit.

  • Petal Riser

    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

  • Pathology of Absence

    No pathology explains why your absence presents as pain

    Though there was an incision, executed with a precision that bordered on virtue

    Clean margins

    Controlled depth

    No visible hemorrhage

    It was not termed entry

    Only a necessary intervention

    A measured breach expected to resolve without complication

    You approximated the tissue

    Sutured silence in meticulous layers

    Drew language taut to preserve the semblance of integrity

    To maintain the fiction of an unviolated surface

    You remained clinically intact

    Vital signs unremarkable

    Structure uncompromised

    A closed system governed by its own discipline

    While . . I

    Less absolute in containment, began to register deviation

    A persistent tachycardia of thought

    A subdermal inflammation without locus or lesion

    A progressive sensitization to absence itself

    As though the body, having once admitted you, refused your removal

    No anomaly sufficient to warrant intervention

    Only a condition diffuse, insidious, resistant to classification

    And now

    I feel like

    I am living in a space

    Where no scalpel can excise what remains

    And still

    No pathology explains why your absence presents as pain

  • Voltage III

    Do not come near me carelessly

    I have become fluent in the exquisite discipline of restraint

    There was a time

    When every bright impulse might have escaped me at once

    Without reverence for consequence

    I no longer belong to that kind of ruin

    Now I know the holy intelligence of what is withheld

    The grandeur of a silence so charged it can alter the temperature of a room

    You stand there

    And the air rearranges itself

    Not because of touch

    That would be too simple

    Something passes between us

    Subtle as a filament beneath glass

    Invisible until it burns

    Refined enough to make stillness feel like an event

    I do not reach

    I let the distance glow

    I let it become unbearable with elegance

    Because desire, when it has matured beyond appetite, does not beg for completion

    It acquires gravity, and everything in its field begins, quietly, to lean

    So if I cross toward you

    It will not be from weakness

    Nor from hunger without thought

    It will be because

    I have measured the cost of contact

    And found it beautiful

    And when I touch you

    It will not feel like beginning

    It will feel like recognition at its most dangerous

    As though something ancient in the blood had been waiting

    For precisely this permission

    The End

  • Voltage II

    But listen

    Even lightning

    Must gather itself before it cleaves the sky

    I have gathered

    I have stood inside the anatomy of collapse and named it rehearsal

    Have felt the surge rise beneath my ribs

    And chosen—not to extinguish it—but to contain

    There is power in the unspent

    There is dominion in the held breath that does not betray itself

    You think stillness is absence?

    No—it is a field of charged quiet

    A storm disciplined into elegance

    A body that could unravel the room and instead chooses to remain

    So do not come near me expecting softness alone

    I am composed of forces that negotiate with fire

    That bend impulse into precision

    That hold entire voltages behind an unshaken gaze

    And if I touch you—it will not be by accident

    It will be because I have decided exactly how much of the current you can survive

    To be continued . .

  • Voltage

    I am not the tremor you misread as fragility

    I am the voltage beneath silk

    The disciplined chaos that chooses not to unravel

    My pulse does not betray me

    It rehearses storms

    Each errant rhythm

    A clandestine rehearsal of thunder

    I have already survived

    Do not confuse my stillness with surrender

    I have swallowed entire tempests without naming them

    Have stood inside the structure of collapse

    And called it breathing

    There are galaxies stitched behind my ribs

    Wild, incandescent things

    And yet I sit here

    Composed

    Drinking the quiet

    Like it belongs to me

    I do not chase

    I do not beg

    I do not fracture at absence

    I become it

    I turn distance into dominion

    Silence into a language only the deliberate can read

    To be continued . .

  • Color • Wake

    Love is

    Not the loud red of arrival

    Not the blue that once named the animal

    But something more patient

    A hue that does not ask to be witnessed

    It gathers in the soft underside of things

    In the pulse behind my wrist

    In the dim gold of late afternoon

    Resting on skin that has known both fire and its absence

    I am no longer painted

    I am permeated

    A slow diffusion

    Like pigment released into water

    Not dissolving

    But becoming indistinguishable from it

    There are colors now that do not belong to sight

    The warmth that lingers after touch

    The quiet violet of being understood

    The pale, infinite white of a moment that asks for nothing

    And still

    Somewhere beneath it all

    A deeper tone remains

    Unnameable, steady as breath beneath sleep

    It does not bloom

    It does not fade

    It moves, slow and certain

    Through every hidden place in me

    Until I am no longer carrying color

    I am the place it comes alive

  • Chromatic • Studies

    Color does not sit on me

    It enters

    The way pigment enters canvas

    Pressed

    Worked in

    Slowly absorbed

    Until it can no longer be removed

    I feel it first

    As a warmth

    A red laid beneath everything

    A ground that breathes through the surface, rising in soft intervals with my pulse

    It is not placed

    It spreads thin at first, a wash of heat, then deepening

    Thickening, until it holds inside me like something alive

    Gold moves differently—

    It lingers

    A glaze across the ribs, caught in the curve of breath

    Like light resting on bare skin just long enough to be felt

    And blue

    Blue opens me

    A slow saturation

    Wet into wet, bleeding through the edges of my body until even the quiet begins to expand

    There is no clean boundary

    No edge that does not soften under contact

    Everything blends

    Color into body, body into language

    Language into something that cannot be separated once it begins

    My hands know this

    The way they move, the way they press, the way they follow what has already started beneath the surface

    Every mark carries sensation

    A pressure, a drag, a yielding

    As if creation itself were a kind of touch that does not stop at the skin

    And I let it happen

    This layering, this slow insistence, this quiet undoing of distance

    Until I am no longer working with color

    But inside it

    Held in it

    Moving with it

    A body that has become its own surface

    Warm

    Open

    Continuously receiving what enters and chooses to stay

  • Inescapable (III)

    I have begun to release what was never entrusted to me—not you, not entirely—but the silent labor of sustaining what you leave unfinished.

    There is a distinction now—subtle, but irrevocable.

    It did not arrive through resolve, but through depletion—through that slow recognition.

    That devotion without reciprocity becomes erosion. I no longer extend myself toward you with the same unguarded impulse.

    Not because the feeling has diminished—but because it has clarified.

    You remain consistent in your inconsistencies—present in fragments, attentive in intervals, returning just enough to ensure nothing dissolves.

    And I—I have ceased to assemble meaning from what is partial.

    There is a composure in me now that was not there before—not detachment, not absence—but a contained awareness that does not pursue what does not arrive whole.

    I have come to understand that what holds substance does not require persuasion, does not depend on endurance, does not ask to be maintained by one.

    So I withdraw my effort from what was never equally carried.

    Not in resistance, not in finality—but in preservation.

    You remain within that familiar distance—accessible, yet never fully offered.

    And I remain—but altered. No longer oriented toward you, but returned to my own center of gravity.

    There is a stillness here that does not ache—a quiet reordering of where I place my energy, of what I permit to remain unfinished within me.

    And in this—without declaration, without urgency—I arrive at a certainty I do not need to speak aloud: what does not meet me in its fullness will no longer hold me in its absence.

    Because I have stood in the quiet of this long enough to understand the difference between what is shared and what is endured alone.

    And I have endured enough. Not loudly, not visibly—but in the private chambers of a feeling that was never returned with equal weight.

    And still—I do not regret you. Not the moments, not the knowing, not even the cost. But I can no longer remain where I am not fully received.

    And so—without resistance, without bitterness, without the need to be understood—I release what never chose me in the way I chose it.

    And in the quiet that follows, in the space you no longer occupy in the same way—there is something unexpectedly tender: the return of myself. And with that knowing—unforced, undeniable—I remain whole.

    The End

  • Inescapable (II)

    Did not arrive at this lightly.

    This quiet, persistent regard has established itself within me. Without any assurance of return.

    As though it had always known how to inhabit me before – I had the language to refuse it.

    You were never meant to reside here in this manner. I have known you within the ordinary hours.

    In conversation that carried no weight. In laughter that did not ask to be remembered.

    In that quiet familiarity that rendered everything. Effortless and unguarded.

    But also, in the moments where composure failed me. Where I did not conceal myself, where something in me gave way without resistance.

    You have seen me there—

    Not as an observer.

    But as one who remained, who did not turn away from what was difficult to hold, who received what I had not intended to reveal.

    You have known my silence with a precision that unsettles me, recognized its weight before I could name it.

    Read the subtle alterations in me with a clarity that has, at times, exceeded my own.

    There is a familiarity in you that reaches beyond language.

    As though you have learned the internal blueprints of me, without ever being instructed.

    And somewhere within that knowing, something altered.

    Not abruptly, not sufficiently to be named. But with the quiet inevitability of something taking root beneath the surface of what appeared unchanged.

    I care for you in a way that does not demand. And yet- cannot convincingly claim.

    It requires nothing.

    There is a tenderness in it, yes. But also a gravity that settles into me with a patience I cannot interrupt.

    Because to care in this manner is to remain within the presence of something that neither fully arrives nor entirely withdraws.

    Something that exists in a suspended condition between what is felt and what is permitted.

    You exist within that interval. Not absent, not wholly present, and still you alter me.

    Not through declaration, not through certainty, but through the quiet persistence of your being.

    Through the way you remain just near enough to be undeniable, and just beyond what I can claim.

    Not for what might be, not for what has not come to pass, but for what is.

    This quiet, unclaimed connection that neither of us has been willing to relinquish.

    It rests between us. Like something living.

    Unacknowledged, and yet fully formed.

    Something that continues not because it is sustained, but because it has not been undone.

    And I do not resent you for it.

    I simply recognize what it asks of me. To feel without resolution, to remain without conclusion, to understand without release.

    And in this immensity

    I no longer attempt to resist.

    To be a continued . .

  • Inescapable

    This is written from a place of quiet weariness. Where I see clearly and still do not leave, where something remains. Not because it is easy, but because it will not loosen its hold on me. There are moments when it gathers in my chest, so completely I could cry from exhaustion. Not because I do not understand. But because I understand, and remain.

    ••••••••

    When you grow tired.

    Understand that I have been standing for some time – within a quiet depletion.

    A subtle undoing that gathers without spectacle without witness – without relief.

    It accumulates – not from absence – but from the persistence of what remains – from the repeated deferral of what has already taken shape.

    In everything – but admission – In moving alongside something undeniable – While denying its rightful form in preserving composure.

    While something within me presses with increasing clarity – Against its containment- Against the careful discipline -We impose upon it.

    I recognize it – In the measured duration of your nearness – In the deliberate incompleteness.

    Leaving me suspended As though finality itself Were a boundary – We are unwilling to cross – As though definition- Would demand more than we are prepared to concede.

    And yet – What exists does not diminish – It gathers – It consolidates itself – In the spaces you leave unoccupied – In the quiet disarray – Of my interior world – In the gradual yielding of the structures – I once believed sufficient.

    There is no reprieve in this – No restoration. Only a sustained interior tension. Precise. Unarticulated. And yet entirely present.

    That neither dissipates. Not resolves into something gentler. It is exacting in its continuity.

    It endures without permission. Without confirmation. Without the courtesy of resolution.

    And still – I remain within its influence. Not out of uncertainty.

    For I – Perceive it with an exactness. That admits no illusion. But because there is within you – A force – I do not readily dismiss.

    A quiet insistence – That continues to draw me inward. Despite the fatigue it leaves in its wake.

    It is not softness. It is not yearning alone. It is something more exacting.

    Something that persists. Even as I grow weary of its lack of conclusion.

    Even as I begin to understand – the cost of its continuation. There are moments in which I consider departure – Not as escape – But as preservation.

    And yet even in that consideration – I feel its return – Not as urgency.

    But as inevitability. And so I persist. Not unaware. Not untouched. Not unaltered. But still unwilling – Or perhaps unable to withdraw from what continues to exist between us with a certainty that requires nothing.

    That offers nothing. And yet remains – Unrelinquished – Unresolved – And entirely – Inescapable.

    To be continued . .

  • Constancy

    I pause the day to hold you

    Your small body

    That has never known excess

    Only devotion

    Ten years of the same quiet loyalty

    Of returning to me

    Without question

    Without distance

    You have so little to give

    A small voice

    A fragile frame

    A life that asks for almost nothing

    And still

    You love me

    With something that feels immense

    It humbles me

    The way you choose me again

    And again

    As if I have always been enough

    I hold you

    Not because you need me

    But because

    I need to remember

    How love can be this simple

    This faithful

    This complete

    •

    Happy 10th

    Sweet boy, of mine

  • Blue Animal (III)

    There are forces

    That do not announce themselves

    They gather

    Like constellations

    Assembling behind the visible sky

    Like a stone

    Learning slowly to become a cathedral

    Without ever being told it is sacred

    This is where we arrive

    Not at the edge of desire but beyond it

    Where even longing feels too small to hold what has taken root

    Something vast has entered the body

    Not to burn it

    Not to claim it

    But to widen it

    I feel it in the architecture of breath

    In the way silence now carries weight

    As if every quiet moment were holding up a ceiling of stars

    You are no longer something I reach for

    You are the shift in gravity

    That reorders everything

    The unseen axis around which my inner world turns without resistance

    And I

    I am no longer surface

    I have become depth itself

    A chamber where light arrives altered

    Where time forgets its urgency

    And lingers

    As if it, too

    Discovered reverence

    There is no pursuit here

    No distance to close

    Only this immense, wordless recognition

    As if something ancient

    Has finally found the shape

    It was always meant to inhabit

    Blue animal

    You were never the storm

    You were the sky learning how to hold it

    And I

    Named your endless thirst a weakness

    As if oceans could apologize

    For their depth

    As if magnitude

    Were something

    To be contained

    The end

  • Blue Animal (II)

    YOU ARE

    The undertow

    I mistook for stillness

    The quiet muscle beneath the surface

    Pulling whole coastlines without sound

    You do not ask

    You rearrange

    Salt enters me the way memory does

    Without permission

    YOU ARE

    A tide that studies my fractures

    Filling them slowly

    Until – I forget

    Where I end

    And you begin

    My body

    A map

    You do not read

    Only erase

    YOU ARE

    Who takes the names

    I gave myself

    And returns them

    Wet

    Unrecognizable

    YOU ARE

    Not hunger

    But the patience of it

    The long blue waiting

    That knows

    That I am learning

    How to stand

    At the edge of you

    Without dissolving

    I am learning

    How to keep one bone

    Unclaimed by the sea

    YOU ARE

    A surge

    Of breath

    That turns to liquid

    Just before contact

    Teaching my every nerve to anticipate you

    YOU ARE

    The pull behind restraint

    The place where my hands

    Forget their obedience

    Again

    And again

    To be continued . .

  • Blue Animal

    YOU ARE

    Like the sea

    You write me

    Inhale me

    YOU ARE

    A cold-lipped, deliberate, blue animal with a memory for bone

    Taking my scattered language

    My driftwood vows

    My soft, collapsing promises and worries

    In your mouth

    YOU ARE

    The shore

    Over the paleness of a white page

    Dragging me across it line by line

    Until my silence leaves a mark

    I have seen your tide

    Bending the nudeness of my body

    Like something hungrier

    Something that loves the undoing of my hands

    Ruining me

    Making relics of what I have tried to forget

    To be continued . .

  • Symmetries

    Stood inside myself

    As one stands in a garden

    Already bloomed

    Not searching

    Not gathering

    Only aware

    Of the fragrance

    There were moments

    That brushed against me

    Soft as wind through leaves

    They did not carry me away

    I let it pass

    Through the open doors of my senses

    Without closing them

    Without following

    Because I now know

    That not everything

    Must be held

    Some things

    Are meant to be felt

    And left intact

    I remain settled

    In my very own skin

    Intentional

    Unchanged

    Somehow

    More than myself

  • Tender Architecture

    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

  • Undertow IV

    I am intact

    I repeat this like fact

    Like law

    Still – something tilts

    When you appear inside a sentence

    Not wanting

    Not waiting

    Something closer to being marked without consent

    My body notices before I do

    A flicker

    A tightening

    As if a wire had been brushed somewhere beneath the skin

    You speak

    And it is ordinary

    So ordinary it unsettles me

    Because nothing in you reaches

    Yet something in me answers

    I refuse it – a future

    I deny it – a shape

    Still – it lingers

    Not asking

    Not leaving

    And I

    I gather myself around it

    Contained

    Deliberate

    Even this betrays me

    And still

    We remain only what we say

    The End

  • Undertow (III)

    And still

    I am not afraid

    I have swallowed

    Darker things, than this

    I have carried absence

    The undertow is not cruel

    It is exact

    It strips me

    Not of love, but of illusion

    What remains

    Is something harder

    Something luminous in its fracture

    A pulse that does not ask to be held

    A body that does not confuse

    Touch with arrival

    If you reach for me now

    You will not find the me that floated toward you

    Like an offering

    You will find depth

    You will find pressure

    You will find a silence

    And still

    There is heat here

    Strange

    Feral

    Uncharted

    The kind that burns

    Without flame

    The kind that lives

    In the center of a woman

    Who has learned

    How to disappear

    Without ever leaving

    I am no longer asking to be saved

    I am becoming the thing

    That survives the drowning

    To be continued . .

  • Undertow (II)

    And I

    A chamber of salt and voltage, you flicker at the edge

    Not absence, not presence, just a disturbance, in the surface of things

    Your voice, a thin wire that fails to conduct

    I have outgrown the need to translate you

    See how I stand now

    Unspooling light from my own marrow

    No more orbit

    No more leaning

    Even the stars burn cleaner here

    Without your gravity

    Go

    Become rumor

    Become distance

    Become nothing I must answer

    I remain exact

    Electric

    Entirely my own

    To be continued . .

  • Undertow

    I come here

    Observe myself

    From the inside

    There’s a sea in there

    Influenced by shooting stars

    With enough spark

    To resist your charm

    In this reality

    You become a bird

    That speaks in maritime

    To be continued . .

  • Sunblood (II)

    and still
    light does not leave

    it settles

    low- under the skin

    i move through rooms
    as if carrying a second sun

    hidden but insistent

    everything touches it

    water
    glass
    my own hands

    and i feel it

    something
    that asks to be kept

    even in absence

    even in the long
    unlit hours

    you are not here

    and still

    something of you
    circulates

    not memory

    something warmer
    more exact

    like heat
    trapped in stone

    after the day is gone

    i try to name it

    but language fails

    it always fails

    so i do not name it

    i carry it

    this quiet
    this gold
    this undoing

    until my shadow

    begins to burn in glow

    To be continued . .

  • Sunblood

    i did not fall into you
    i opened

    like a wound that recognized
    its own knife

    you arrived quietly
    no thunder – no claim

    and still
    everything in me
    shifted its allegiance

    i was whole before you

    i tell myself this
    like a prayer that doesn’t hold

    yet now

    there is a before
    that feels uninhabited

    you touch so little

    and still
    i am rearranged

    light does this
    it enters and suddenly
    the room remembers its dust

    you stand in me

    like something uninvited
    and necessary

    and i

    i become
    terribly available to absence

    you leave

    this is your gift

    this is your violence

    to exist in me without weight

    to burn without flame

    tell me

    what is this

    that asks nothing

    and takes
    everything

    i do not call it love

    love is too small

    too human

    too forgivable

    this is something
    that survives

    even when
    you are not here

    and i

    i remain

    lit

    and ruined

    by it

    To be continued . .

  • Sunburn

    I was a quiet landscape before you

    A single purposed bird

    Illimitably moving

    Towards – color

    A consciousness

    Where nothing is taken

    Nothing is given

    And still the earth opens

    As if it cannot bear to remain one

    I loved you here

    Long after the sun withdrew its hand

  • Arriver

    Today

    My heart

    Lost its rhythm for a moment

    Not like fear

    Not like pain

    Like a bird forgetting the pattern of its wings mid-flight

    Startled by the sudden awareness of the sky

    I told you, just that

    And you

    You did not question the sky

    You became it

    You held me

    The way gravity holds the earth

    Without force

    Without permission

    Without asking if it should

    And my body

    Which had been speaking in fragments

    Fell back into a language

    Older than thought

    But you

    You do not stay

    You are not made of staying

    You are like tide

    Like wind

    Like something

    That belongs to movement

    And I

    I do not ask

    The ocean

    To become a shore

    I have learned

    What it is to live

    Without arrival

  • Almost Mine

    I am not unsure

    Of what I feel

    Only of where to place it

    It lingers

    Like morning

    Through an open window

    Resting on me

    Softly warming

    What I thought

    Had settled

    But never staying long enough

    To belong

    You are

    Easy as breath

    Something I don’t notice

    Until you’re gone

    And then

    Everything feels

    Just a little heavier

    There is something

    Between us

    It finds me

    Without asking

    Pulls me closer

    And then returns

    To where it must

    Leaving behind

    The feeling

    Of having been near

    I don’t name it

    I wouldn’t know

    What to call something that lives

    In the spaces

    Between your words

    Between your pauses

    And what you take back

    I feel it

    In the way

    You look at me

    Like you see me

    And then

    Like you remember

    You shouldn’t

    I do not reach

    Not because

    I don’t want to

    But because I understand

    Some things

    Are not meant

    To be held

    Only Felt

    So I stay

    In the quiet

    You leave behind

    In the space

    That is never empty

    Just unclaimed

    And I watch

    How you return

    Without arriving

    How you stay

    Without staying

    And still

    Something in me

    Moves toward you

    Without moving at all

    And somehow

    That is enough

    Like reflections on water shimmering

    Just out of reach

    Something I can see

    But never gather

    Something that exist

    As long as I don’t try

    To make it mine

    And still

    I stand here

    Letting it touch me

    Learning the shape of a feeling

    That asks for nothing

    And gives everything

    Quietly

    Without promise

    Without future

    Without a name

    Just this

    And me

    Standing in it

    Until it fades

    Like the end of a day

    Soft

    Certain

    And gone

  • Within

    There is no space

    Between us

    My respiration

    Zigzags

    Every breath

    Your bed takes

    In this capacity

    Blood – blazes

    Knowing

    I’ve been burned

    Many times before

    But with you

    I am less contained

    The suddenness

    Of your hands

    Intertwined with mine

    Fails – to open

    While our shadows

    Become identical

    In a synchronous rhyme

  • Dear me:

    SUN: Sit and Listen

    “I stride to be

    More useful than your words

    In my absence

    Loneliness comes

    Are you still afraid of the dark

    You connoisseur of light

    Join me, let’s take

    A snapshot of God

    Air here is eternity

    Inexplicable gravitation

    Because here you don’t need a pen”

  • If . .

    I ask you

    Point me to God

    And you point

    To the sun

    You have missed

    The point – entirely

  • Arrows & Metaphors

    Nothing has been spoken

    Yet – it is loud

    These feelings

    Exist in a poem

    Ink, and its elegance

    Place arrows

    On the palm of my hands

    Metaphors that rise

    With every consonant

    A corresponding rhyme

    That illustrates and loves

  • Viability

    Gestational verbs

    Is what we have

    You measure love in weeks

    While I hover

    Like an aerialist

    Over your skin

    This equilibrium

    Has turned sentences to lust

    Leaving – me – ropeless

  • Hábitat

    Night winds

    Startles my roof

    Such a ripeness

    In season

    Generations of birds

    Tucked between branches

    Feels like

    I am – in

    Nineteen eighty five

    Everyone was home

  • Tactile Nature

    Faithful you

    Noiselessly

    I have left you

    -Underwood

  • March 14

    I have been

    A fire

    A cornerstone

    Inside your mind

    Easier to cry

    When you’re not around

    Because, loving you

    Requieres a soft space

    On the opposite side of my bed

  • Utmost love

    Does God have a voice

    Does it speak in flowers

    Must be magical

    In a desire no less luminance’d

    Than a birthing womb

    A miraculous fortress

    With no sounds or wounds

    Resolute and most bright

    -Motherhood

  • To my sons . .

    When I struggle

    With your absence

    You call me

    My stomach beats

    A thousand marches

    Aches to be so many miles away

    If I had no sight

    I could find you both

    In the greatest of multitudes

    This haptic perception

    Reminds me

    That light

    Is sufficient

    If you dare to see it

  • Out’loud

    You come to me

    With hands

    Made of rain

    Annunciatively

    Whispering my name

    In this adverbial space

    I become

    Ever so nervous

    Forever’ly

    I swear

  • Ode to us

    We’re not alike

    I am – paused

    You – straight’shooter

    Fracturing the curvature of my spine

    If you’re going to love me

    Love me – well

    Victoring these days

    That feel like nights

    Resurrected

    By one giant sky

  • Insoluble

    Sometimes

    Brightness

    Feels

    Disfigured

    Shinning

    So innocently

    While I stand

    In what feels like salt water

    Sulfured, perhaps

    Honed by your touch

    Skeptical, by your embrace

    Because in this clarity

    I’ve figured out

    You’re just wrong

    For me

  • SIN-tuh-lay-ting

    The air feels golden

    Immaculate matter

    High enough

    For birds to fly

    Flickering flight

    Minimal effort

    With every rise

    I have

    Loved

    You

    Here

    – Scintillating

  • Fevered

    One word at a time

    Spoken in the dark

    Points with wit

    Incendiary like us

    And in this night’gold

    Love reveals in verse

    Divided where sun is most

    Exigently, my love

  • Hemostasis

    Doors between us

    You tell me

    Be careful with my head

    These ambitious thoughts

    Must hide them

    Like contraband

    In this reverent space

    I greet you

    Making myself

    An immediate cautery

    Instead of shaking your hand

  • Day 18

    Dry fasting

    Is discipline

    Day 3 to 7

    Were diabolical

    Cried a decade

    Worth of tears

    And with that

    Sleep reached REM

    Vivacious colors

    Thankful for those milliseconds

    The dead never looked so alive, rosy cheeked

    With an exuberant amount of health

    -Dad

  • Les’soi

    My skull

    A spy

    Must admit

    That tomorrow

    I will do this again

    It has power over me

    Like war itself

    In this patriotism

    Of self reflection

    I am lucky enough

    To have a glimpse

    Of my heart

    Its two hands, grasping

    What feels like love

  • Catalina

    The day my mother married

    Hers, weeped

    Futurity of leaving Cuba, gone

    She grieved her only child

    All efforts to bring her home, futile

    Through the years

    And under a fleet of angels

    I saw myself

    Reflected in her

    Superbly waiting for motherhood

    Incessant fire, love that burns

    Like a tower, in me

  • When we met

    Your less•ness

    Was more

    Gazing at you

    Felt elegant

    Over mirrors

    While you traced

    Curvatures of my faith

    Christ, hanging over us

    More preciser than light

    And yet, you took me

    Through a straight line

    Inviting flames to our bed

    Sparks to invisible

    For poetry to withstand

  • Cover of a poem . .

    Familiarity

    And wants

    In this existence

    Just, lives here

    Digitally tucked

    In a forever

    In this valiancy

    And under

    An extremest sun

    I squint

    Seeking

    God’s own words

    Instead of my own

    How wondrous of me

    Desiring to be

    No less than

    A cover of a poem

  • Entanglement

    As much as I

    Perceive the future

    Its architecture

    Comes to me

    Most purest, splendid

    Comparable to a womb

    Shining down

    From heaven

    But in this present

    I witness

    And swear

    Our brevity

    Is a rigorous rhodium

    Uttering love

  • Tauromachy

    God made you

    Out of a clay

    One granule

    After another

    Exquisite

    Reversed

    Intelligence

    It is possible

    We loved

    While strolling

    Upside down

    Indeed, we have

    I have observed you

    Light suited saluting

    A formidable crest

    Please, hush now

    Here comes silence

    In this bright applause

    -Man

  • When I can’t sleep . .

    I think of color

    Conte technique

    Over this pillow

    I shade pebbles

    Greater than your hands

    Scattering through debris of seeds

    In a place with so few trees

    Hearing your echo intertwined with mine

    What is ‘this’ passion

    If you can’t meet me halfway

    Sometimes

    You feel like a void

    That I follow

    Without following you

    A portraiture

    The tonality

    Of a single text

  • Instant

    You make my flame slow

    It’s not what I give that smokes

    To draw what we both can’t kill

    In this mackerel atmosphere

    I love you

    Down tidily

    Waist deep

    Men like you

    More absolute

    A general liberty to sting

  • Realities

    My dad would always tell me, repeatedly.

    ‘You don’t pick the wrong men, they pick you’

    This always resonates when finding myself in that sort of situation.

    I’m quite imperfect couldn’t keep a marriage, not for lack of trying.

    Tried to give my sons the illusion of balance. That didn’t last, it was soul crushing.

    My sons are now grown men, and have a clear understanding of my side of the story.

    Yes, there are two sides.

    A high percentage of women leave – to live – not to be with someone else.

    I’ve lived, loved, and raised two men.

    Empty nest, feels loud.

    Their happiness and relationships, validates all efforts.

  • Vocal

    At dusk

    I become

    Part of him

    Quietly placing

    Dishes in suitcases

    Light yellow

    Leather tones

    Such a sense of grief

    When you cover my eyes

    And show me

    The inside of your world

    Fresh footed staircase

    Spiraling sideways

    Onto the longest corridor

    Linear shadows

    Of a once lived home

    I am not indifferent

    To your pain

    I too

    Have traveled

    On this road

  • Hero

    The fire you create

    Keeps me up at night

    Suspended, perhaps

    In this tonality

    My soul, alone

    Fears reciprocity

    I am a – faithfullest

    We can’t be friends

    Intimacy too lit

    Feels like an infidel

    In this physiology

    I am no longer

    The protagonist

    It’s you, your heart

    It’s pulsing valves

    Such regurgitation

    For a man, like you

  • What about us

    Lustful is unlikely

    Traces of your skin

    Lingers my hands

    We have flown

    In this structural paradise

    Seeking light

    Out of storms

  • Outgrown

    you

    sold

    small

    amounts

    of myself

    because, i

    deliberately

    unloved, you

  • Dark Bright

    Lover you

    Over my brow

    Can I touch you

    In this firmament

  • Glass

    you, in the flesh

    (i) – in glass

    too much exactitude

    for my soul to hide

    that you’ve lived

    – in my ribs

    on your own terms

    silently wanting me

    while (i) felt nothing

    But – no’s

    you, in the flesh

    i – no longer in glass

  • Lines

    tigers point at us

    we rush we run

    standing

    in a mouth

    of plasm

    trading our skulls

    for love

  • Tell me

    If time is love

    How many corners

    In a heart

    That is burning

    In entanglement

    Too deep

    Too loyal

    To ever be

    Afraid

    Of you

  • Truth About Love

    some say it’s a bird

    some say it’s absurd

    but when I asked you

    a nest was growing

    beneath your bed

  • With You . .

    I am

    Unsure

    Of what I feel

    You taught me

    Strength

    The

    Unimaginable

    Kind

    Circumstance

    Brings me here

    A place where I can

    Hang my words

    And, my unraveling

    Thoughts of you . .

    Jan 26, 2026

  • Here Comes the Sun

    You can’t

    Start a fight

    In a lonely

    Home . .

  • Impetuous

    A subtle lullaby

    Bronzed

    As the earth rotates

    Such wonder

    Touching a vain

    Girl’s heart. . .

  • Quiet Resentment

    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

  • Early Poems

    This so called, craft

    Floats, steady, and upwards

    Myself, in a time of mirrors

    – August

  • Just hold . .

    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

  • To write, is . .

    Like random twilights of dust

    So distant, only God could see

    Yesteryears, my love

    And yesterwants

  • Daylight

    Knocking darkness

    Out of nights

    Even in these shadows

    Truthfully speaking

    I prefer daylight

    The hardest

  • Poetry

    My mercy

    A need to substitute

    My mouth, for a dream

    Different homes

    Pincushions for doorknobs

    Damnit I love you

  • ‘Brightness Of My Dark’

    One must be blind

    Stripping God of its own light

    Things none of us could be

    The profound luster in lines

    It’s happening to me

    A wound, too echo’d to reveal

    That love is not found in days

  • Notes . .

    A writer sometimes retains only those poems that find no place. A strange ineffable experience of the mind, its enormous success of self love

    Almost fierce

    Cannot be

    Until Am is Am

    My very veins

    In its desire to be

  • Love Overmuch

    Tigers brilliantly move

    Bright limbs of mortals

    Overpowered and mute

    Utmost – love

    No more still

    Than your tongue’d speech

  • Almost . .

    Forgot

    How still

    Your mind is

    This is not

    A compliment

    It’s rhetoric,

    It chokes

    The good parts of me

  • ‘in no particular order’

    Hang over my feet

    Like lousy flowers

    That love just like me

  • Edge of Time

    Thought

    Much less

    of me

    Flask-less-ly

    You waited

    Like spirits

    Hanging over

  • For The Love of Blue

    Veils of what I’ve done wrong ..

  • Night’Comes

    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

  • Mimic

    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 . .

  • Untimely

    The furthest of reaches

    Sex seal serpentines

    These syllogisms

    Transform me

    Inside is outside

    It is everywhere

    And nowhere

    Invented

    Devoured

    – Man

  • Nobody Knows

    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

  • We Grind our Teeth

    Like birds

    With a grape to blame . .

  • His Heart

    Immune to mine

    Interiors of gray matter

    Granular minerals

    Sleepy-colors

    Obsolete to some

    – Love

  • Untitled

    Love clamps itself

    Leaving small gaps

    With just enough spaces

    Allowing you to taste

    Your very own tongue

  • Lessness

    Communicate

    A little more

    Than twice

    Like syllables

    Gain enormousness

    Looking for us

    In the middle

    Of the night

  • L’absente

    Tried to draw

    The sound of you

    All I found, was . .

    A flying crate

  • Chucks Bar

    Scattered me

    I long to be something

    Stronger 

    Than a woman 

    Who once loved you