Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: self discovery

  • Blue Bicycle

    I want to live on a mountain
    where the mornings smell like wet stone
    pine split open by rain
    and cold earth.

    Where the windows stay open
    and the curtains move
    even when no one is touching them.

    No phone beside the bed.
    No little red numbers
    telling me who needs me.

    Just a blue bicycle
    leaning against the house
    its frame cold with morning
    one tire resting in the grass.

    I would leave before the sun
    came all the way over the ridge.

    The road would still be damp.

    My tires would press
    dark half-moons into it.

    There would be fog
    caught low between the trees
    and birds somewhere above me
    I could hear
    but not see.

    I would ride past wildflowers
    past fences silver with dew
    past places with no names.

    The air would taste green.

    It would sting my face
    and fill my lungs
    until there was no room left
    for anything else.

    No voices.

    No unfinished conversations.

    No one asking
    where I am.

    Only the small metallic click
    of the bicycle chain
    the soft crush of gravel
    my breath
    going in and out.

    I would have a small house
    higher up the mountain.

    A wooden table.
    A white cup.
    A bed beside an open window.

    At night
    the sheets would smell like wind.

    Sometimes rain
    would begin in the dark
    and I would wake
    to water tapping the roof
    and the whole mountain breathing
    outside my window.

    I think I would sleep differently there.

    Deep enough
    to forget myself.

    And every evening
    I would ride home
    while the light disappeared
    from the road.

    The trees would turn black first.

    Then the mountain.

    Then my hands
    on the handlebars.

    And for a few minutes
    there would be nothing in the world
    but the blue bicycle beneath me
    the smell of rain coming
    and one small light
    burning in the window ahead.

    Mine.

    I think
    I could be happy there.

  • Drowning in Ink

    I have journals everywhere.

    Some are stacked on shelves.
    Some are hidden inside drawers.
    Some I have carried with me for years
    without opening.

    Every once in a while,
    I pull one out
    and read a few pages.

    Sometimes I recognize the handwriting
    before I recognize the person.

    I know I wrote it.

    I know where I was living.
    I know what was happening.
    I know the names.

    But I read the words
    and wonder,

    What mental state was I in
to write this?

    The thoughts contradict each other.

    One sentence believes something.
    The next one destroys it.

    Nothing stays true
    for very long.

    The language is abstract,
    conflicting,
    irrational—

    as though the words
    were dropped from the sky
    and I spent entire pages
    trying to arrange them
    into a life.

    Sometimes, honestly,
    it makes no sense at all.

    I used to think
    that kind of writing
    was profound.

    Maybe some of it was.

    But some of it
    was simply confusion
    given a pen.

    And sometimes
    I feel sorry for her.

    I look at the handwriting,
    the words pressed too deeply
    into the paper,
    the sentences running
    into one another,

    and I almost want
    to reach through the years
    and hug myself.

    It is surreal
    to feel tenderness
    for someone
    who is still you,

    but no longer exists.

    Back then,
    I never imagined
    I would see myself differently.

    I thought the way I felt
    was permanent.

    I thought every thought
    was the truth.

    I could not imagine
    that one day
    I would open those journals
    and read them
    from the other side.

    That was a different stage
    of my life.

    I understand that now.

    Every stage asks us
    to become someone
    we cannot yet recognize.

    And maybe the purpose
    is not to erase
    who we were,

    but to look back,
    recognize her,
    forgive her,

    and keep moving.

    Sometimes I want to tell her
    that she will not always
    feel this way.

    That one day
    she will read these pages
    without falling back into them.

    That healing will happen
    so quietly
    she may not notice it
    until years later,

    when she opens an old notebook
    and realizes
    she is reading the words
    of someone she once was,

    someone she still loves,

    but no longer has to be.

    She would not believe me.

    Back then,
    I could not see beyond
    the next sentence.

    I kept writing
    because I thought
    the words might save me.

    But the more I wrote,
    the further I disappeared.

    I was not writing
    my way out.

    I was drowning in ink.