There are days
when I cannot tell
if I am living my life
or simply standing inside it.
Sometimes I need
the weight of ordinary things—
the counter beneath my hand
the floor holding me up.
I have loved people
who made me question
whether love was
something we entered
or something we survived.
I have stood inside happiness
and already mourned it.
Maybe that is the
terrifying beauty of it—
to know something is alive
and already feel
the shape of its absence.
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.
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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