Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: self-worth

  • Maybe

    If I could
    I’d paint you a sky
    low enough to reach.

    A sky without distance.

    Why?

    I don’t know.

    Maybe because I’ve spent
    an embarrassing amount of my life
    making myself comfortable
    inside things that weren’t good for me.

    Love, especially.

    The kind that asks you
    to become smaller
    so it can stay.

    The kind you keep calling love
    because you honestly don’t know
    what else to call
    the thing you can’t leave.

    Maybe that’s why
    I wanted the sky so low.

    Not because I wanted to reach you.

    Or maybe I did.

    I don’t know.

    Maybe I just wanted
    for once
    something I loved
    to be close enough
    that reaching for it
    didn’t hurt.

    And maybe that’s the whole point.

    Maybe I’ve spent too much of my life
    loving things
    that required me
    to hurt myself
    just to get close.

  • Look at Yourself

    I have been thinking about the terrible fact
    that people can become unreachable
    while still being alive.

    There should be another word for this.

    Death is too complete.

    This is something else.

    This is knowing someone is somewhere
    washing their hands,
    looking for their keys,
    standing in front of an open refrigerator
    deciding what they want—

    and not knowing
    if you cross their mind at all.

    And why do I torture myself this way?

    As if I cannot see myself in a mirror.

    As if I need someone else’s eyes
    to tell me I am still here.

    I stand in front of myself every morning.

    Same face.
    Same mouth.

    Same body that has carried me
    through every terrible thing
    I was certain would finish me.

    And still,

    one person’s silence
    can make me question
    everything I know about myself.

    This embarrasses me.

    Not because I loved.

    I have never been ashamed of that.

    But because I keep returning to the silence
    as if it contains an answer.

    Was I too much.
    Was I not enough.

    Was it my body.

    Did something in me become disappointing
    once it became real.

    Look at me.

    I want to say this to myself.

    Look at yourself.

    You have a mirror.

    You have lived inside this body
    for more than half a century.

    You know what it survived.

    You know how many times
    it had to become yours again.

    And still,

    I stand there

    looking directly at myself

    and somehow

    I am waiting for someone
    who is not here

    to tell me

    what he sees.