Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: Relationships

  • Every Word I Wrote

    I could not hear him.

    I stepped away from my friends and pressed the phone closer to my ear.

    New Orleans continued around me.

    Music through an open doorway.
    Rain shining on the street.
    Someone laughing nearby.

    I asked him to repeat himself.

    I still could not hear him.

    Later, a message arrived.

    Something close to:

    I can’t do this with you anymore.

    I have forgotten every word he said.

    I remember every word I wrote.

    I had always been the one who left.

    I knew when the air had changed. I knew when affection had begun to turn into something else. I knew how to reach the door before anyone could close it behind me.

    But I had known him for decades.

    He belonged to the long history of my life, and I had mistaken history for proof.

    There had already been reasons to leave.

    I knew them.

    Still, I stayed.

    That was the part I could not forgive.

    Not that he ended it.

    That I had remained long enough for him to.

    That night, I went to Chuck’s Bar.

    I sat outside.

    By then, the screen had begun to divide itself in two. I remember closing one eye, trying to make the words stay where I put them.

    Chuck’s Bar

    I long to be something
    stronger

    than a woman

    who once loved you.

    September 6, 2015

    Four lines.

    Nothing about New Orleans. Nothing about the call. Nothing about the message.

    Only the wish to become someone else.

    For years, I believed the poem was about him.

    It was written against the woman who had stayed.

    I thought she had failed me. I wanted to become stronger than she was because I did not yet know how to forgive her.

    Years passed.

    He asked me to forgive him.

    I did.

    Today, we are friends.

    I still see him tenderly.

    That would have been impossible to the woman sitting outside Chuck’s Bar, closing one eye against the doubled screen.

    She hated him.

    God, she hated him.

    But time returned him to his proper size.

    When I read those four lines now, I no longer hear a woman asking to become stronger.

    I hear a woman leaving herself a way back.

    I have forgotten every word he said.

    I remember every word I wrote.

  • Coffee

    If we ever have coffee I’ll drink mine black.

    No sugar.

    Not because I’m trying to prove anything.

    I’ve simply had enough bitter things in my life to know the difference between bitter and strong.

    A good Cuban coffee is misunderstood.

    Most people make it in an espresso machine now. It’s smoother that way.

    Pressure has a way of polishing the edges.

    I grew up with stovetop coffee.

    Thicker.

    Darker.

    The kind that lingers in the cup and in the morning.

    Neither is wrong.

    Just different.

    I suppose people are like that too.

    Some arrive polished.

    Some arrive carrying more body, more history, more weather.

    I’ve learned not to mistake one for the other. But we’re not really here to talk about coffee.

    Coffee is only the excuse.

    A warm cup between two people trying quietly, to become less strange.

    Before we get too far, I’ll silence my phone. It won’t touch the table again.

    If I’m having coffee with you, I’m having coffee with you.

    That matters to me.

    I won’t rush you.

    I like coffee that takes its time, and people who do the same.

    You’ll probably notice I don’t sit completely still.

    It’s not anxiety.

    I just move.

    My father was the same. My sister too. Apparently, stillness skipped this family.

    I’m trying not to cross my legs. My right peroneal nerve has decided that’s no longer an option. Crossing my legs doesn’t quiet my mind. It quiets my body.

    Just enough that I can pay attention to yours.

    That’s coffee with me.

    I may move.

    I may laugh.

    I may say something ridiculous before I say something true.

    But I am listening.

    I’ll ask how you take your coffee, not because I care that much about coffee but because I want to know how you became you.

    I like people.

    Not crowds.

    People.

    One at a time.

    Across a table.

    I don’t need us to agree.

    I don’t need us to have lived the same life.

    I just need to leave the table feeling like we actually met.

    Not our jobs.

    Not our titles.

    Not the polished versions we’ve learned to introduce.

    Just…

    us.

    I don’t collect acquaintances.

    I collect conversations

    I keep thinking about years later. Something happens when people talk. A sentence opens like a small door.

    You’ll say something ordinary, and suddenly I can see it.

    The kitchen.

    The street.

    The old car.

    The room where something changed.

    I don’t just listen to what you say.

    I notice how you arrive inside your own sentences.

    The pause.

    The small laugh before something serious.

    The way your eyes move when a memory gets too close.

    I don’t know how to explain it.

    I just start seeing you.

    Not the version that knows how to sit in public.

    The one underneath.

    The one who slips out for half a second and hopes no one saw.

    I usually do.

    Maybe that’s why I remember people.

    Not because I remember everything. Because I remember where their words took me.

    I don’t listen to respond.

    I listen because people are always leaving clues.

    I don’t remember the watch. The shoes. I remember the sentence.

    The one they said without thinking.

    The one that explained everything.

    And usually when they think no one noticed, I did.

    I don’t always say it right away. Sometimes I just sit there holding my coffee, grateful that for a moment someone trusted the room enough to become real.

  • Outgrown

    you

    sold

    small

    amounts

    of myself

    because, i

    deliberately

    unloved, 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

  • Almost . .

    Forgot

    How still

    Your mind is

    This is not

    A compliment

    It’s rhetoric,

    It chokes

    The good parts of me

  • 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 . .