Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: seasons

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

    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

  • 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

  • Footnotes

    There is a quiet, lodged in my spine

    Not mercy, not rest

    A held breath that has learned to last

    They call it L5
    They dress it in tidy syllables

    Compression

    Degeneration

    Small, sterile consolations

    For something that does not console

    My body refuses neatness

    It speaks in pressure
    In the slow persuasion of weight

    In the way a column leans and does not admit it

    In the way it carries
    long past asking

    Some days it rises like a verdict

    Not loud, never theatrical, only exact

    YOU WILL MOVE
    BUT DIFFERENTLY

    And I do

    I rise into it

    Into the narrow corridor of standing

    Into the careful arithmetic of steps

    Measuring what remains against what is required

    There are mornings
    when my body feels older than light

    As if time has settled in me unevenly

    Heavier in the places no one sees

    And still
    there is no audience for this

    No ceremony
    for the quiet labor
    of holding oneself together

    Only this private endurance

    This unremarked fidelity to movement

    I have bent around it

    Reshaped myself to accommodate the untied

    Made room for the ache
    as one makes room
    for a difficult truth

    And somewhere in that making, something fierce remained

    Not untouched, but unwilling to disappear

    The spine bends, but it does not relinquish me

    It holds, not gently, not kindly, but with a severity that resembles grace

    I have learned that faith is not brightness, not relief, not even hope as it is often spoken

    FAITH, is this . .

    The quiet decision to stand again inside a body that has already asked too much of itself

    To move, when movement is no longer given, but taken

    Step by deliberate step

    To carry what has no language

    And so

    I proceed, revised, contained

    Still bearing my own weight

    Not because I am unbroken

    But because
    I did not leave when breaking began

  • Preface

    I did not mean to write this.

    It came the way certain things do. Without asking, without a plan.

    As if something in me had grown tired of remaining hidden.

    Nothing here is finished. Nothing has been made whole.

    This digital space holds what has shifted, what softened, what could not return to where it once rested.

    If there is tenderness, it is small and easily missed.

    If there is opening, it is not sudden, only a slow turning toward something.

    I am still learning to trust.

    There was a time I believed that staying closed was the only way to remain intact.

    That if I held myself carefully enough, quietly enough, nothing could reach me that might take more than I was willing to give.

    And I became very good at it.

    I learned how to remain how to speak, how to move through the world with precision, with control, with a kind of quiet restraint that made everything appear unchanged.

    But there is a quiet cost to that kind of living.

    You begin to disappear from yourself.

    You begin to forget what it feels like to exist without guarding every part of you.

    You begin to live as something contained, not something alive.

    And somewhere in that without my permission something in me began to resist.

    Not loudly.

    Not all at once.

    Just enough to make it impossible to return to what I was.

    And that is where these words come from.

    From the place I kept hidden, not because it was empty, but because it was too full.

    From a self that has always spoken in images

    In petals that refuse their bloom.

    In soil that remembers everything.

    In light that does not arrive but waits until it is allowed.

    My metaphors are not decoration.

    They are translation.

    They are the closest I can come to saying what I have carried, without breaking it open too quickly.

    Without losing what it means to me in the telling.

    If you know how to read them.

    You will know me.

    Not entirely.

    But in the places where language hesitates.

    Where meaning slips.

    Where something is felt before it is understood.

    Because . .

    That is where I live.

    Between what I can say and what I cannot.

    Between clarity and concealment.

    Between the self I offer.

    And the one I keep just out of reach.

    Words arrive to me.

    And I must place them somewhere, before they begin to weep within me.

    They do not come when I am ready.

    They come when I am unguarded.

    Late, when the world has quieted.

    When the hour no longer belongs to anything but what I have kept inside.

    Words keep me awake.

    They find me in the stillness of 1 a.m.

    Insistent, unresolved as if they have been waiting for the moment I can no longer hold them back.

    And I write not because I choose to, but because I cannot leave them there.

    Unplaced.

    Unspoken.

    Turning inward until they begin to break me open.

    So this . .

    All of this.

    Is not a narrative.

    It is not a resolution.

    It is a record of what happens when I allow myself to remain present with what I feel.

    Without forcing it into something easier, cleaner, or more complete.

    Read this as you would something living.

    With patience.

    With care, without needing it to become anything other than what it is.

    Because I am still here learning how to exist within myself without retreating.

    Learning how to stay when every instinct tells me to close.

    Learning how to let something be seen without disappearing in the process.

    And these words . .

    They are simply what remains.

    When I choose, even briefly, to no longer hide.

  • 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

  • Rearranging

    You arrive here not as a beginning—but as something rewritten by its own hands.

    Your children have stepped out of your body into their own weather, calling you less, needing you in quieter ways—like a photograph still warm from the sun.

    Your parents soften into time, their voices folding, their strength becoming memory while they are still standing.

    And you—you are no longer who you were when everything required you.

    Now, you require yourself. You move differently—with a kind of knowing that drips slowly from the center of your chest.

    This is not loss.

    This is space.

    A clearing where your name sounds new again.

    Your hands—once full of everyone—begin to open, and in that opening something wild and unrestrained begins to breathe.

    You are not starting over.

    You are rearranging—like light when it realizes it no longer has to prove its brightness.

  • 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 . .

  • If . .

    I ask you

    Point me to God

    And you point

    To the sun

    You have missed

    The point – entirely

  • 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

  • Levity

    Today feels loud

    Soundless energy

    Birds stopped singing

    As if they know

    Something we don’t

    You tell me

    I won’t be alone

    Note how rooted

    This situation feels

    It hurts like hell

    Drowning in puddles

    When you promised

    You’d always keep me afloat

  • Noise

    Unsure if it’s maturity

    But when someone speaks to me

    As if they know me

    And make assumptions

    About my character

    My ears quit working

    I go numb, blank

    I have mastered it

    They walk away

    Because in that instant

    Im just dead inside

  • For: Dad

    When I cannot believe

    You bring

    A pair of knees

    To my prayers

    One clanking bell

    Sounds of certainty

    Missing you –

    Is like a transverse ache

    Dull, penetrating my right side

    Fiercely, loving you

    Twelve years was apparently enough

    For others to never mention your name

    Find me in my dreams

    So I don’t forget the angles of your face

  • Everyday

    i pass by

    the oldest

    mountain

    denying

    every stain

    of rain

    i should have resolved

    the tactics of my faith

  • With you

    Splendor

    And truth, alone

    Rings more in me

    My thighs become

    Weak, invisible

    And with this wonder

    Spring soars in me

  • Dark Bright

    Lover you

    Over my brow

    Can I touch you

    In this firmament

  • 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

  • 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

  • Time . .

    There’s one

    There’s two

    There’s three

    Of me

    In this triplicity

    I count aphorisms

    When it’s difficult

    To speak . .

  • 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. . .

  • Shades of Purgatory

    I once knew

    How light was spent

    Its trickling effects

    As faith pointed

    With a golden rod

    My own despair

    Sat in a womb of fear

    Aware it was not science

    My conscious inadvertently

    Reversed millions of words

    Narrowing it down to one

    -God

  • 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

  • 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

  • Next Train . .

    I am adapting

    Cowardly, but adapting

    This is distinction

    Between surviving

    And existence

  • 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

  • To be broken . .

    Fight for insight

    God’s copyright

    In this interior of light

    My signature becomes

    A wrath that requires no reason

  • ‘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

  • 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 . .

  • Must’ve been me •

  • 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

  • Lessness

    Communicate

    A little more

    Than twice

    Like syllables

    Gain enormousness

    Looking for us

    In the middle

    Of the night

  • Táctil

    There’s no such thing

    As neatness

    When it comes

    To our minds

    I breath

    You flicker

    Incalculable

    Of course . .

  • Overused’Spaces

    Collide like us

    Like they

    Like me

    And we

  • Virtue

    Solid line

    Straight shooter

    Surrounded by time

    Jan 11, 2020