Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: self

  • Sixteen Years

    I keep showing up
    like I have not been emotionally
    dragged behind a moving car

    Lip gloss
    Earrings
    A dress that says
    I am fine
    in three languages

    A little perfume
    on the neck
    as if I am not allergic
    to everything now

    weather
    men
    dust
    memory
    the small humiliations
    of wanting too much
    from people
    who speak in crumbs

    This is the part
    no one respects enough how much glamour
    is actually discipline

    How many times
    a woman fixes her hair
    while her insides
    are somewhere in the corner
    throwing furniture

    How many times
    she paints herself
    back into a body
    because the world
    still expects her
    to arrive recognizable

    How many times
    she walks into a room
    beautiful
    because collapsing
    would be inconvenient

    There is a reason
    women are tired

    Not delicate tired

    Not take-a-nap tired

    Generational tired

    Bone tired

    Tired from being
    the continuity

    The meal remembered
    The appointment made
    The child answered
    The bill paid
    The birthday saved
    The grief folded
    and put somewhere
    no one would trip over it

    Tired from carrying
    the invisible inventory
    of everyone’s life

    Who needs milk
    Who needs medicine
    Who has a fever
    Who has practice
    Who needs a form signed
    Who has a meeting
    Who is breaking
    Who must not be told
    they are breaking
    because then they will break more

    Tired from holding
    the emotional roof
    over everyone’s head
    while someone asks
    why we seem anxious

    Anxious?

    Of course we are anxious

    We are keeping
    the whole sky
    from falling
    and still expected
    to choose earrings

    This is for the women
    who stayed too long
    because they were trying
    to be fair

    For the women
    who left
    because staying
    was teaching their children
    the wrong definition of love

    For the women
    who are still there
    counting the cost
    in the dark

    For the women
    who never married
    but still know
    what it is
    to mother everyone
    and be mothered by no one

    For the women
    raising sons
    raising daughters
    raising themselves
    between laundry cycles
    and legal papers
    and school mornings
    and grocery lists
    and the quiet storm
    of being the only adult
    who notices everything

    For the years
    we try to make a home
    out of a room
    where no one is helping us
    hold up the walls

    For the child
    that belongs to two people
    but somehow
    becomes one woman’s calendar
    one woman’s body
    one woman’s remembering
    one woman’s exhaustion

    And yes
    we try

    We try until trying
    starts to look like madness

    We try until our tenderness
    becomes a second job

    We try until we are managing
    the child
    the house
    the money
    the meals
    the moods
    the silence
    the resentment
    and the grown man
    who keeps needing instructions
    on how to be grown

    We try until love
    turns into logistics

    Until the marriage
    becomes another room
    we have to clean

    Until the person
    who was supposed to help us
    carry the life
    becomes one more thing
    we have to carry

    And then one day
    the math becomes
    so clean
    it almost feels cruel:

    If I am already doing everything alone
    why am I doing it
    with someone beside me
    making it harder?

    That is not bitterness

    That is a woman
    finally telling the truth
    without decorating it first

    The best thing I ever did
    was leave

    I know how that sounds

    A woman is supposed
    to whisper divorce
    like an illness
    like a failure
    like a stain
    she could not get out
    of the good sheets

    But no

    The best thing I ever did
    was get divorced

    I gave myself
    the largest blessing

    I signed my name
    and called it mercy

    I walked out
    of the life
    that kept asking me
    to disappear politely
    and I became
    someone I could finally
    come home to

    Sometimes divorce
    is not the end
    of a family

    Sometimes it is the removal
    of the thing
    that kept the family
    from breathing

    Sometimes a woman leaves
    not because she wants
    to be alone

    but because
    she already is

    And then sixteen years pass

    Sixteen years
    since the paper
    the silence
    the door
    the strange new air

    Sixteen years
    of learning how to sleep
    without listening
    for disappointment
    in another room

    Sixteen years
    of carrying children
    bills
    birthdays
    school forms
    fevers
    holidays
    grief
    and my own name
    back into my own mouth

    The sixteenth year opens
    like a window
    I did not know
    I had survived long enough
    to unlock

    Some days it feels longer

    Some days it feels
    like I just left yesterday
    with my heart in my hands
    and no instructions

    But look

    I made a life

    Not a perfect one

    Mine

    And no
    it was not graceful
    in the beginning

    At first
    he hated my guts

    Let us tell the truth
    without making it prettier
    than it was

    There was bitterness
    There was anger
    There were years
    when the air between us
    had teeth

    That is what happens
    when a life breaks open

    People bleed
    People blame
    People become strangers
    holding the same children
    by opposite hands

    But time
    if it is kind
    or if we are lucky
    or if everyone finally gets tired
    of carrying the old knife
    does something strange

    It does not erase

    It rearranges

    The man who once
    could barely look at me
    now stands beside me
    in photographs
    at graduations
    birthdays
    holidays
    the ceremonies
    our sons keep making
    out of their lives

    We are not friends
    in the small-talk way

    We do not sit around
    chattering
    over coffee
    about the weather
    or what any of it meant

    But we are connected

    We will always be connected

    There are children
    walking around this world
    with both of us
    written into their bones

    That is a cord
    no court can cut

    And sometimes
    there is light
    at the end of the tunnel

    Not for everyone
    Let us not lie
    for the sake of a pretty ending

    But sometimes

    Sometimes the bitterness
    gets old

    Sometimes the anger
    loses its posture

    Sometimes maturity arrives
    late
    limping
    but still arrives

    Sometimes two people
    who could not stay married
    learn how to stand
    in the same room
    for the people
    they made together

    And sometimes
    I look at him now

    happy in another life
    married again
    for almost as long
    as I have been free

    and I think

    God—

    I did the right thing

    Not with hatred

    Not with longing

    Just a clean knowing
    inside my chest

    Because some people
    cannot be alone

    They run from one marriage
    into another
    as if marriage itself
    was the missing piece

    as if the institution
    was the love

    as if a new ring
    could explain
    why the old house
    was burning

    But I did not run

    I stayed with myself

    I did not remarry
    just to prove
    I was still wanted

    I learned the shape
    of my own silence

    I raised my children
    I built my days
    I became the woman
    waiting for me
    on the other side
    of that door

    And now
    when he looks at me
    when his eyes pause
    a little too long
    on the woman I became

    I do not need to know
    what he is thinking

    That is his country

    Not mine

    Mine is this:

    I left

    I lived

    I was right

    I have walked into rooms
    star-studded
    and half-dead

    I have said
    I’m okay
    with such good lighting
    even God almost believed me

    There should be awards
    for this

    Not trophies
    Nothing ugly

    Something small
    Gold
    Sharp

    Something a woman could wear
    near her collarbone
    and not explain

    For the mornings
    we get up anyway

    For the years
    we hold everything together
    with one hand
    and still use the other
    to put on mascara

    Do not ask me
    how I survived it

    I don’t know

    Some days I am all woman
    Some days I am a loose sequin
    hanging on for dear life
    to a dress
    that has seen too much

    Some days I am the dress

    Stretched
    Pulled
    Zipped up over grief

    Still flattering
    from certain angles

    Still dangerous
    in the right light

    I have been loved badly
    and still picked the right shoes

    I have cried
    and then checked my reflection
    because suffering is one thing
    but looking insane in public
    is another

    I have carried ache
    like a clutch purse
    into restaurants
    doctor’s offices
    parking lots
    and conversations
    where everyone pretended
    not to notice
    how much of me
    I was holding together
    with one hand

    And still—

    I shine

    Not because I am happy
    Not because I am healed
    Not because the night
    has been kind to me

    I shine
    because something in me
    is vulgar enough
    to insist

    Because even broken things
    catch light
    when they refuse
    to stay buried

    Because I have never known
    how to disappear quietly

    Because every time life says
    Be smaller
    I hear
    Wear earrings

    Because every time grief
    tries to make a home
    inside my mouth
    I put on lipstick
    and speak around it

    Because I am tired
    yes—

    but I am not finished

    There is a difference

    A woman can be exhausted
    and still be holy

    She can be heartbroken
    and still be hilarious

    She can be divorced
    undone
    unanswered
    overstimulated
    and still somehow
    look like the main event
    in a room
    that did not deserve her

    That is not vanity

    That is resurrection
    with better lighting

    That is survival
    with a little shimmer
    because why should pain
    get to be the only thing
    that leaves a mark?

    Look at us

    Still here

    Still dressed

    Still ridiculous

    Still making beauty
    out of whatever
    tried to flatten us

    Still walking in
    like the floor
    owes us applause

    Still star-studded
    with every place
    we almost didn’t survive

  • Little Moments

    Little moments
    little moments.

    That is how I survive
    the enormous things.

    Not by becoming brave
    all at once
    not by understanding
    what keeps hurting me

    but by returning
    to the small life
    that waits for me
    without asking questions.

    It is Sunday afternoon.

    The rain has passed.
    The light is back
    on the windows
    like nothing happened

    and maybe that is what light does
    it returns
    without explaining
    where it has been.

    And I am here
    trying to gather myself
    without making a scene.

    A cup of water.
    A shirt pulled over my head.
    My feet on the floor.

    The room quiet enough
    to hear what I have been carrying.

    Then my own hand
    my left hand crossing over
    to grip the indentation
    of my ribs

    that small hollow
    my body made
    as if it knew
    I would need somewhere
    to hold on.

    Not softly.

    More like instinct.

    Like a woman
    holding herself closed
    so nothing tender
    falls out.

    And almost at once
    my head tilts to the right

    my face finding
    the slope of my shoulder
    the warm place
    between skin and arm

    and I breathe myself in.

    Not perfume.
    Not anything placed there
    for the world.

    Only clean skin.

    Only the quiet scent
    of having been
    in water too long

    that soft, familiar scent
    of clean skin
    after too much water.

    And something in me
    recognizes it
    as happiness.

    Small happiness.
    Private happiness.

    The kind no one sees
    because it happens
    inside the body
    before it becomes
    a word.

    And there it is—
    the strange mercy
    of my own life.

    My ribs under my palm.
    My breath still rising.
    My face against my shoulder.

    My own scent
    calling me back
    to myself.

    There is magic in that.

    Not the kind
    that arrives loudly
    or saves the room
    from burning.

    The other kind.

    The kind that stays
    with you
    in the ordinary light.

    The kind that says
    without words:

    come back.

    Come back
    to the body.

    Come back
    to the cup of water
    the clean shirt
    the floor beneath you.

    Come back
    to the light
    moving across the room
    as if it still believes
    there is something here
    worth touching.

    Come back
    to this Sunday afternoon
    that has no idea
    how much beauty
    it is asking you
    to survive.

    Little moments
    little moments.

    The ribs.
    The breath.
    The hand.
    The shoulder.
    The skin.

    The life
    that does not leave me
    even when I forget
    how to stay.

    And still
    somehow

    I do.

  • Stayed Behind

    I know he is not my forever

    It took me until tonight
    to understand that

    And strangely

    it was not grief I felt

    It was peace

    Maybe because
    I have been preparing
    for this
    my entire life

    First a country

    I left it once
    and it never stopped
    leaving me

    Then my father

    I thought the earth
    might have the decency
    to pause for a moment

    It didn’t

    Then the years
    when my sons
    still reached for my hand

    At some point
    you understand

    that loving something

    and keeping it

    are two entirely different miracles

    The other day
    I found one long
    bright strand of my hair
    resting against his shirt

    I reached for it

    He looked down
    and softly said

    be careful with that

    I have carried those words
    around ever since

    Because for one impossible second

    it seemed to me

    that it was not the hair at all

    It was some quiet part of myself

    the daughter

    the mother

    the woman who survived
    all those leavings

    that had crossed the distance
    between two people

    and chosen

    without asking me

    to remain

    I know he is not my forever

    But I think tonight
    I finally understood

    that forever

    was never the thing
    I was looking for

    I think

    I only wanted proof

    that after losing

    a country

    a father

    and the years
    when my sons
    still reached for my hand

    there was still
    some living part of me

    capable

    of leaving itself

    behind

  • Women of Salt

    It never took much to fill my stomach.

    I thought that was simply the way I was.

    A small appetite.

    A child satisfied easily.

    Years later I understood that hunger had already been negotiated long before the plate reached me.

    The women in my family were experts at subtraction.

    A little less for themselves.

    A little more for everyone else.

    No announcements.

    No speeches.

    No visible sacrifice.

    Just small adjustments made so often they became invisible.

    A spoonful here.

    A portion there.

    A second helping quietly redirected.

    The mathematics of survival.

    I never noticed it as a child.

    Children rarely do.

    I thought food simply appeared.

    I thought dinner was dinner.

    I thought everyone lived this way.

    I did not understand that somewhere between the kitchen and the table, someone had already decided I would eat first.

    This was Cuba.

    Not the Cuba in photographs.

    Not the Cuba tourists carried home in their suitcases.

    A society of shortages.

    Food shortages.

    Soap shortages.

    Fuel shortages.

    Power outages that arrived without warning.

    The endless improvisation required to survive them.

    And yet the women continued.

    They always continued.

    I remember entire aisles filled with Russian canned meat.

    The same can.

    Again and again.

    Shelf after shelf.

    As though variety itself had become a luxury.

    As though eating anything else had ever been an option.

    At the time none of it felt strange.

    Children accept the reality they are given.

    The astonishing becomes ordinary very quickly.

    I remember ash being gathered and sifted through cloth until only the finest powder remained.

    No splinters.

    No debris.

    Only a soft gray dust.

    Then the dishes were washed with it.

    Astonishing, but true.

    The meal fed the family.

    The fire cooked the meal.

    The ashes cleaned the plates.

    Nothing was wasted.

    Not food.

    Not labor.

    Not a single useful thing.

    I remember the ash beneath their fingernails.

    The smell of smoke that never seemed to leave their clothes.

    The certainty with which they moved through scarcity.

    As though survival were not remarkable.

    As though it were simply what morning required.

    Looking back, I realize they treated themselves the same way.

    Reducing here.

    Stretching there.

    Giving and giving until very little remained.

    And somehow still finding enough to offer.

    Perhaps that is why it never took much to fill my stomach.

    I was eating from portions made larger by the hunger of women who loved me.

    I miss these women.

    More than I know how to explain.

    Not because they were perfect.

    Not because they never failed.

    Because they understood things I am only now beginning to understand.

    The quiet negotiations of love.

    The invisible mathematics of survival.

    The dignity of continuing.

    I see every version of myself in them.

    The woman who worries.

    The woman who nurtures.

    The woman who remembers.

    The woman who gives more than she should.

    The woman who keeps going.

    Sometimes I think inheritance has very little to do with what we are given.

    Perhaps inheritance is recognition.

    The sudden realization that the people we miss never truly leave.

    They remain in our gestures.

    In our habits.

    In the way we love.

    In the way we endure.

    Today I feel as though I lived a life only fiction could properly explain.

    Not because it was tragic.

    Not because it was beautiful.

    Because it was both at once.

    The kind of life where dishes were washed with ashes.

    Where store shelves repeated the same can until repetition itself became abundance.

    Where women performed miracles and called it chores.

    The women in my family were made of salt.

    ‘Women of Salt’

    The proof was everywhere.

    In the sweat.

    In the sea surrounding the island.

    In the meals that appeared when there should have been none.

    In the hands that gave more than they kept.

    In the quiet arithmetic that took place before every meal.

    And when I look closely enough, I find them everywhere.

    Including myself.

  • Unread II

    And so

    I come here

    Digitally bent
    with exhaustion

    From you

    From myself

    From the endless labor
    of translating a life
    into something a stranger might recognize as their own

    And from those who read me

    My faithful witnesses

    The ones who have learned
    the weather of my language

    Who know when a bird
    is not a bird

    When a doorway
    is grief

    When rain
    is longing wearing a disguise

    When a wound
    has simply changed its name

    They follow the migration
    from the literal
    into something far more alive

    Not metaphor as decoration

    Metaphor as resurrection

    The ordinary transformed
    until it begins breathing

    Until a chair becomes absence

    A house becomes memory

    A river becomes devotion

    A single feather
    becomes an entire human life
    trying to lift itself
    from the earth

    And what astonishes me still

    Is that they come

    Again and again

    Not to consume the story

    To inhabit it

    To leave pieces of themselves
    between the lines

    To recognize a sorrow
    I believed belonged only to me

    And somehow return it less lonely

    There is a sacredness in that

    A quiet exchange

    The oldest miracle I know

    One human being saying

    I have never lived your life

    And yet I know this room

    Perhaps that is why
    I remain faithful to language

    Even when it disappoints me

    Even when it fails
    to cross the distance

    Even when I place
    the most tender thing I possess
    into another person’s hands

    And hear only silence

    Still

    I cannot abandon it

    A bird does not abandon the sky

    A river does not abandon the sea

    And I do not know
    how to abandon words

    They have carried me too far

    Buried too many dead

    Lit too many darkened rooms

    Kept me alive
    through too many winters

    So I arrive here
    carrying another fragment

    Another shard of light

    Another unfinished prayer

    Not because I possess answers

    Because I possess language

    And language

    When offered honestly creates a bridge
    where there was only distance

    A lantern
    where there was only dark

    A witness
    where there was only solitude

    Perhaps that is why I continue

    Not for publication

    Not for praise

    Not even for understanding

    I continue because somewhere beyond this glowing screen someone is waiting for the exact shape of a sentence that will make them feel less alone inside their own becoming

    And if I can give them that

    even once

    then every unread letter

    every unanswered question

    every mile I have traveled
    through the wilderness of myself has not been wasted

    Because despite everything, despite the silences, despite the distances, despite all that language cannot save

    I still believe

    it saves something

    and sometimes

    something

    is enough

  • Unread

    I am grieving the absence of language

    Not because I enjoy words

    Not because I write poems

    Because language is the organ through which I experience existence

    Remove it, and I bleed internally

    I have spent my life translating pain into something survivable

    How I buried the dead

    How I loved the living

    How I crossed impossible distances
    without moving an inch

    When my father died
    language sat beside me

    When loneliness hollowed out entire rooms, language remained

    When I could not carry the weight of my own life, language carried part of it for me

    I have always made homes from words

    Built shelters from sentences

    Lit lanterns against darkness with nothing more than a line of poetry

    Even now

    Standing in the aftermath of my own confession

    I reach instinctively toward words

    The way a drowning creature reaches toward air

    Because language is not the record of my life

    Language is my life

    And lately

    For the first time I can remember

    I have been unable to find a single sentence
    large enough to hold what is happening to me

    That frightens me more than the thing itself

  • Coordinates

    You ask me where I am
    so often now

    That sometimes
    I feel less like a woman
    and more like a delicate thing
    you are trying to keep hidden from the world

    Tucked away somewhere safe

    Somewhere unseen

    Home
    In bed
    Under blankets
    Inside the quiet corners of a life
    you can still imagine reaching

    And every time I say
    I just got home

    there is relief in you

    Good
    Stay home and relax

    As though the world itself
    becomes less threatening
    once I am behind a locked door

    But what amuses me
    is that you ask these questions
    as though I do not have a life
    moving constantly beyond your line of sight

    I work
    I drive
    I disappear into errands
    traffic
    noise
    whole afternoons that belong only to me

    And still
    you keep searching for me

    Did you eat
    What did you eat
    Did your trainer come today
    Did you train
    Did you go to the gym anyway
    Are you working tomorrow
    What are you doing now

    And I laugh sometimes
    because surely
    this cannot possibly be normal
    for two adults our age

    At this point
    my whereabouts are documented
    with the precision
    of a classified investigation

    And the absurd thing is

    you ask everything
    with such unbearable tenderness
    that I cannot even become annoyed properly

    Because beneath the questions
    there is no control

    Only care

    Care disguised as curiosity
    Concern disguised as conversation
    Longing disguised as routine

    You do not ask
    because you need information

    You ask because somewhere along the way
    my ordinary existence
    started mattering to you

    And perhaps that is why
    you become restless
    when I disappear too long

    Why relief enters your voice
    when I answer

    Why you always sound calmer
    once you know
    I am somewhere soft and reachable

    Meanwhile
    I stand in the middle of my very busy life
    holding my ringing phone
    wondering how something so tender

    can also be
    so exhausting

  • Captivity

    I am not obsessed with birds

    It is worse than that

    I watch them because somewhere
    inside their suspended bodies
    I keep seeing myself

    And perhaps
    that is why I keep watching them

    Not to study them

    To capture them in stillness long enough
    to understand
    what in me
    continues surviving this way

    Because what devastates me most
    is how beautiful their endangerment is

    How every living thing
    appears most holy
    at the exact moment
    it could disappear

    There are birds
    who damage themselves quietly

    Not from storms

    From devotion

    In captivity some begin feather-plucking

    Small repeated griefs
    where the body
    unable to escape its own longing
    turns inward against itself

    The beak returns
    again and again
    to the same tender place

    Chest
    Wing
    Breastbone

    Until the aviary floor
    becomes covered
    in the evidence of attachment

    I understand that now

    How the soul
    when unable to fly freely
    toward what it loves
    sometimes begins consuming itself instead

    And still
    the bird continues singing

    That is the part
    that ruins me

    Not the wound

    The devotion surviving beneath it

    The instinct to keep returning
    to the very place
    where the heart exhausts itself

    Because birds are creatures of imprinting

    Once attachment enters the nervous system
    the body remembers

    Migration paths
    Familiar calls at dusk
    The exact direction
    of returning

    And what is longing
    if not the body
    trying to migrate back
    to the place
    it believes warmth once lived?

    Meanwhile
    my dignity survives quietly
    inside the attachment

    like a woman standing perfectly still
    inside rising water
    hoping no one notices
    how hard she is fighting
    to keep breathing

    Still graceful
    Still composed
    Still answering softly
    while entire oceans
    move beneath the skin

    Some evenings
    I watch the birds crossing
    the darkening sky
    and feel something inside me
    recognize itself in them completely

    Not freedom

    But suspension

    The beauty of remaining airborne while exhaustion slowly enters the wings

    And perhaps
    that is what devotion truly is

    Not love at its beginning

    But love after it realizes
    the light may never stay
    and continues flying toward it anyway

  • Oxygen & Light

    I surrender to the sun
    while the birds sing recklessly
    through the trees
    like they are drunk on oxygen and light

    The swing moves softly beneath me
    The breeze slips across my legs
    the side of my face
    warm and cool at once
    touching me
    with both hands

    And suddenly
    the whole afternoon feels romantic

    the wind
    the creaking wood
    the gold light spilling through leaves
    like heaven forgetting to close a door

    For once
    I do not want anything more
    than this

  • Temporary Weather

    I have loved men
    the way rain loves old cities

    ‘temporary weather’ – charcoal

    completely
    recklessly
    without asking permission
    to flood every quiet street inside them

    And in return
    I became fluent in absence

    I learned how to survive on fragments

    There were years
    I mistook longing for purpose

    Love should not leave a woman
    feeling invisible
    inside her own life

    And sometimes I wonder

    was it my exterior
    that kept them from seeing me clearly?

    The woman they desired
    was never the whole woman

    Perhaps beauty has its own loneliness
    Its own terrible distance

    They saw the face
    the body
    the perfume entering a room before I did

    but not the trembling tenderness beneath it all

    Not the woman
    trying to survive another ordinary heartbreak gracefully

    Not the exhaustion
    Not the depth
    Not the terrifying sincerity
    with which I loved

    Maybe some men only know
    how to approach a woman’s surface

    And maybe I became so luminous outwardly
    that my soul stood quietly behind the light
    waiting to be noticed

    Now the house is quieter

    My sons are grown
    Their laughter lives mostly in photographs now
    in closets filled with the soft archaeology of motherhood

    And I

    I no longer panic at distance

    I no longer chase what retreats

    I have learned
    that some people only know how to love in glimpses
    beautifully
    sincerely even
    but briefly

    like lightning illuminating an entire ocean

    I do not hate them for it anymore

    ‘temporary weather’ – charcoal

    But I no longer build homes
    inside temporary weather

    These days
    I sit beside myself more gently

    I let the dishes wait
    I let evening settle slowly onto the furniture

    And sometimes
    late at night
    in the black reflection of the kitchen window

    I catch sight of the woman I became

    still soft
    still carrying oceans
    still dangerous with love

    but no longer standing at the harbor
    begging ships to choose her shore

    There is a difference now
    between loneliness
    and peace

    I finally learned it
    in the quiet after everyone left

    And God . .

    what a beautiful thing it is
    to become your own safe place
    after spending a lifetime
    asking the world to let you in

  • Cageless

    I no longer dream
    of extraordinary things

    Not anymore

    Becoming . .
    “Bruised Peaches & Old Paintings”

    I dream of a quiet kitchen at dawn

    I dream of open windows
    A slow walk at dusk
    beneath a sky turning the color
    of bruised peaches and old paintings

    Watercolor | Charcoal

    I want less noise now
    Less performance
    Less of this endless human habit
    of proving we are worthy of being loved

    What I want now is simple
    and therefore sacred

    A sink full of dishes after dinner

    The soft weight of my sleeping cats in sunlight

    Music drifting through the house at midnight

    And love
    if it finds me again
    must arrive gently

    No grasping hands
    No crowded silences
    No love that mistakes possession for intimacy

    I want someone calm enough
    to sit beside my quiet
    without trying to translate it

    Someone who understands
    that my space

    my art, my time
    the invisible interior life of me, has always been cageless

    Not distant
    Not cold

    Simply alive in quiet ways

    Like birds disappearing into evening trees

    Like moonlight moving freely across the floor

    Like poems arriving at 2 a.m.
    asking for nothing except room to breathe

    Because after all these years
    I think love should feel less like fire
    and more like light from another room

    soft, steady, enduring

    the kind that lets you remain fully yourself
    while never letting you forget
    you are deeply—gently
    not alone

  • Ambergris

    Too late to ruin a life completely.

    Ambergris

    And maybe that is why the body refuses to forget it.

    Not the person exactly.

    The atmosphere of them. The warmth left behind in certain rooms. The way silence changed when they entered it. The unbearable intimacy of standing too close while pretending not to notice.

    And even now, years or hours or lifetimes later something remains.

    Like the ghost of ambergris
    still clinging faintly to a collar or the wrist of someone passing too near—warm and mineral and devastatingly human.

    The kind of scent that makes the body remember before the mind has time to defend itself.

    Ambergris

    Too late to ruin a life completely.

    Yet somehow still capable of altering the pulse.

    Because some connections never become ordinary enough to lose their sensuality.

    They remain suspended
    living softly beneath the skin—where longing becomes indistinguishable from memory.

    And perhaps that is why these loves endure.

    Not because they lasted.

    Because they never fully touched the ground.

    Like desire itself
    trying very hard
    to remain civilized.

    Ambergris

  • lives inside rain

    There is something about rain in the late afternoon that makes the heart unable to hide from itself.

    Maybe it is the softened light.
    The sound of water moving through trees and gutters.

    But the moment the rain begins, everything returns.

    The people we loved.
    The people we lost.
    The lives we almost had.
    The tenderness we still carry despite ourselves.

    And suddenly I feel everything.

    Every person I have ever loved.
    Every version of myself that survived loneliness quietly.
    Every moment tenderness entered my life and left before I was ready.

    For one impossible moment they all come back.

    My sons as babies asleep against my chest, warm and safe.
    The sound of laughter moving through a house that once belonged to all of us.

    And then the breaking of it.

    The slow unbearable fracture of a little family I tried so hard to hold together with my bare hands.

    A marriage that looked like a home from the outside but inside felt like disappearing quietly day after day.
    The exhaustion of surviving inside something that no longer allowed me to fully exist as myself.
    The terrible guilt of walking away.
    The terrible necessity of it too.

    And sometimes, when it rains like this, I still wonder.

    Should I have stayed?
    Should I have endured a little longer for the sake of my sons, the photographs, the illusion of wholeness?

    But deep down I know remaining would have been its own kind of violence.

    A slow crime against the self.

    And so I left carrying both grief and freedom in the same trembling hands.

    Rain brings all of it back.

    Quietly.

    The way grief actually lives inside the body.

    You stand there listening to water move through the darkening afternoon while your phone stays silent beside you and suddenly the weight of being human feels almost unbearable.

    Because love after fifty is no longer about fireworks.

    It is about tenderness.

    Someone remembering you.
    Someone noticing your exhaustion.
    Someone asking if you made it home safe in the rain.

    And the heartbreaking thing is how little of that most people receive.

    Most people are starving for softness while pretending they no longer need it.
    Most people are carrying invisible loneliness through conversations about ordinary things.

    And still

    The heart continues reaching.

    Even after loss.
    Even after disappointment.
    Even after entire lives collapse and rebuild themselves around absence.

    The heart remembers warmth and spends the rest of its life searching for it again.

    Outside the rain keeps falling steadily and inside every lit room
    someone is remembering somebody they loved.

    Someone gone.
    Someone distant.
    Someone they still carry quietly inside them.

    And maybe that is why rain hurts so much because for a little while
    everyone we have ever loved feels close enough to touch again.

  • God is

    the smile in your children’s faces
    that breaks you open
    before you can protect yourself

    the way morning comes anyway
    pulling light across a room
    you didn’t think you could get up in

    the breath that stays
    even when you wish it would stop
    even when you are too tired to carry it

    the small hand that finds yours in the dark
    and believes without question—that you will be there the moment you realize
    you have to be

    the light on the wall
    that doesn’t explain anything
    and still feels like mercy

    the yes you didn’t plan to say
    the one that leaves you trembling
    the one that keeps you here

    the chair you leave empty
    and still return to
    as if something might come back

    the strength you never asked for
    but were given anyway

    the quiet that holds you
    when you are falling apart
    and no one knows

    the forgiveness
    that comes back
    after you swore you were done

    the love
    you keep giving
    even after it breaks you
    even after it leaves you

    again
    and again

    the nights
    you sit alone
    holding everything together

    and no one sees

    and still

    you hold

    the way you keep showing up
    even when it costs you everything

    the way you still care
    after learning how much it hurts

    the way you make space
    for others
    when no one made it for you

    the moment you whisper
    I can’t do this

    and do it anyway

    the life you are building
    even when it feels like nothing is forming

    the quiet strength
    of not leaving yourself

    when everything in you
    wants to disappear

    God is this

    this breaking

    this holding

    this staying, the part of you that will not give up even when you beg it to

    the hope that is not gentle or easy but relentless, the force that keeps your hands open and your heart turning

    the reason you are still here, still loving, still choosing, still… after everything, still

  • The Hinge

    i saw myself
    standing in the grocery line of my own life

    hands full of things
    i did not choose

    no one tells you
    how quietly it happens

    how you keep saying yes
    until your hands forget
    what no —feels like

    i watched myself swallow it—a bird

    not the kind they print on curtains

    but the ragged one
    ink-splattered
    off balance

    with a wing
    that can’t decide
    if it is breaking
    or beginning

    i say bird
    you say anxiety
    the doctor says reflux
    my mother says pray

    my body says:
    listen

    behind the sternum
    that almost-ache
    that isn’t pain

    that drop in the gut, that sudden remembering
    you are alive

    and not
    where you thought
    you would be

    i have become
    a species of almost-flight

    i negotiate with gravity
    in quiet rooms
    and call it duty

    some call it love
    some call it
    be reasonable

    i have learned
    the choreography of staying

    how to smile
    while something in me
    paces

    i saw a woman
    that woman was me

    setting a table for ghosts

    one plate for my father

    one for each son
    in their uniform of distance

    their chairs pulled out
    but empty

    and one
    for the self
    that slips out the back door
    when no one is looking

    she pours water
    for all of them

    her hands don’t shake

    she does not drink

    the bird in her chest
    has feathers made of memory
    a beak made of unfinished sentences

    its claws
    hook into the soft places
    where decisions live

    and the world keeps saying
    be calm
    be grateful

    while the sky
    indecent in its openness
    says nothing

    i ask it for instructions

    it gives me none

    only this:

    witness

    the bird does not die
    when ignored

    it grows patient
    it grows precise
    it learns your habits

    it learns
    how long you can stand yourself

    and waits

    for the moment
    you mistake silence
    for peace

    and then

    it moves

    not loud
    not dramatic

    just enough
    to ruin the lie

    i am not telling you to leave

    i am telling you to notice
    the exact second
    your breath changes

    the pause
    before you explain it away

    the shift
    you pretend not to feel

    that . .

    that is the hinge

    that is where your life
    opens

    or stays closed

    you are not broken

    you are over-kept
    over-held
    over-explained

    you are wings
    taught to apologize for air

    so stand there

    in your kitchen
    in your car
    in the long corridor
    of your thoughts

    stand there
    and feel it

    the press
    the pulse
    the almost

    the part of you
    that still wants more
    even now

    call it bird
    if you want

    call it hunger

    call it the refusal
    to live
    half a life

  • 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

  • Prelude to Rumor

    this, comes from something I’ve felt for a long time but didn’t know how to show

    the first time it happened I was twelve

    standing in front of a mirror, looking at myself too long—something shifted

    I could see my face, but I couldn’t feel that it was me, and that frightened me

    since then, I’ve learned to recognize the feeling

    it comes quietly

    I keep talking, moving doing what I’m doing but I’m not fully inside it

    this is what that feels like to me

    like something begins at one point

    here at the shoulder and then spreads outward

    not as damage

    not as pain

    but as a kind of release

    like I am still here but also moving beyond the shape that holds me

    the lines are that movement

    the color is everything that doesn’t stay contained

    the body is what remains when something in me has already stepped away

    I call it rumor in skin because it doesn’t arrive as something clear or visible

    it begins as a feeling barely there

    difficult to name

    something moving under the surface before it can be seen

    it spreads quietly

    without asking

    and by the time I recognize it

    it is already happening

    Rumor in Skin

  • 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

  • You come from us

    you come from a woman from a body that carried you without question, from hands that knew you before you spoke, from a kind of care you never had to ask for

    you were held before you understood what holding was, fed before you knew hunger, loved before you knew how to return it

    you were soothed when you didn’t understand your own discomfort
    you were seen before you knew how to be seen, you were answered before you knew how to ask

    and then you grow into a world that teaches you distance teaches you how to move forward, how to leave, how to harden, how to forget what it felt like to be kept

    and you come back to us as men standing in front of women as if we are something new, something to figure out, something to reach

    but we are not new

    we are the same place you once lived inside

    so why do you do this

    why do you stand so close and still not see us

    why do you reach
    without knowing what you’re reaching for

    why do you touch without understanding what you’re holding

    why do you move through us as if we are surface

    not all of you
    but most of you

    and it repeats

    the same distance
    the same absence
    the same quiet disconnect
    as if something in you
    chose forgetting
    over remembering

    because you don’t know us

    not the way we feel you before you speak

    not the way we notice what you don’t say

    not the way we hold what passes through you without you ever stopping to see it

    we feel your hesitation your distraction, your presence when it’s real
    and your absence when it isn’t

    we feel when you arrive
    and when you don’t

    and still

    we are expected to remain

    as if closeness is something that happens
    just because you are near

    but it is not

    it is as if you forgot completely what it was like to be known without asking, to be cared for without earning it, to be held without having to arrive

    and now you move through us as if we are surface—but we are not

    we are still that same quiet place, still able to hold, still able to know

    still capable of seeing you in ways you don’t yet —see yourself

    but no longer willing
    to be forgotten
    while you stand inside us

    you come from us

    and still

    you don’t remember

    how to see us
    how to feel us
    how to meet us

    in the very way
    we once held you

  • 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

  • Living Inside Movement

    (2:00 a.m.)

    I wasn’t trying to write.

    I picked up charcoal
    because I needed somewhere to put it.

    Whatever this is. Just lines. Nothing finished. Nothing that stays still long enough to make sense.

    I kept trying to shape it
    into something I could recognize.

    Couldn’t.

    Every time I thought I had it—It moved.

    So I stopped trying to make it look like anything.

    Just let my hand follow it. That’s when it felt closer.

    Not right—just… closer.

    Same thing here.

    I’m not writing to explain it. I don’t even think I can.

    I’m writing because it won’t sit still inside me.

    Because it keeps happening and then disappearing like it was never there.

    And I’m left with it
    Whatever’s left of it
    trying to hold onto something that doesn’t hold back.

    So this isn’t a story.

    It’s not even a thought all the way through.

    It’s just me trying to catch something in the moment it almost becomes real.

    Before it moves again.

    ‘Living Inside Movement’

    I keep seeing you
    in the middle of things

    Never where anything starts, never where anything ends

    You just show up, and I let you

    Like it’s something I agreed to a long time ago without realizing it

    We talk—we always talk—about everything that doesn’t matter

    Because the one thing that does would change everything

    And we’re not willing to do that

    So we don’t

    We just stay here
    Living inside movement,
    letting it keep going
    because stopping it
    would force it to become something real

    And I think that’s
    what’s wearing me down

    Not you
    Not even this

    Just the way
    it never gets to land the way I feel it and then have to pretend
    I don’t

    The way you look at me
    like something is there
    and then leave like nothing is

    I don’t think you’re lying

    I think

    You’ve learned
    how to live inside it
    without letting it touch
    the parts of your life
    that would break

    I haven’t

    And maybe that’s the difference between us

    You go back to something solid, something defined,
    something that makes sense to the world

    And I stay here—in something that only exists when you’re standing in front of me

    And I hate that sometimes

    I hate how real it feels
    when you’re here, and how quickly it disappears when you’re not

    I hate that I’ve learned
    how to adjust to that

    How to hold it without asking for more

    Without asking you to choose it

    And I’m tired

    Not loudly—Not in a way anyone would see

    Just in that quiet place
    where something keeps going long after it should have stopped

    And still—I stay

    Not because I don’t know better

    Not because I’m waiting

    But because something in me still believes
    this isn’t nothing

    That it matters in some way that doesn’t have a place to exist

    So I stay—in something that moves, but never arrives

    And maybe one day
    I’ll get tired enough
    to step out of it

    Or maybe I won’t

    Maybe I’ll just keep
    living here—in this quiet, unfinished space

    Where something real
    keeps happening
    without ever becoming anything

    I can call mine

  • 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 II

    It is the precise hand that separates me

    From what I was permitted to name

    And what I have always known beneath the visible

    I say – body’
    and mean a threshold

    Just a place where things pass through
    whether I consent or not

    I say ‘silence’
    and mean a room
    that remembers everything

    I say ‘love’

    and mean the undoing
    though I’ve called it other things to make it easier to keep

    And here in saying one thing and meaning another

    I begin to breathe not freely but sufficiently

    As though metaphor
    does the work for me

    As though air is easier to accept when it arrives
    in disguise

    I do not take the world
    as it is

    I take it as something adjacent, tide, light

    A turning I can tolerate and in that adjustment
    it becomes manageable

    Almost beautiful

    And I

    Still composed, still intact in appearance

    Open just enough to continue

    Without having to call it
    what it is

  • 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

  • Art of Keeping

    Unveil me

    And call this moment truth

    Or what you will

    I have been so many things
    A voice that softened itself
    A silence that learned to endure
    A hand that held
    more than it was meant to carry

    I have been a bird
    Singing in red
    A wound that would not close

    I gathered myself inward
    Folded light into smaller shapes
    Asked what hurt
    to become less visible

    But it remained

    Not louder just closer

    So I stopped asking it

    To disappear

    I let it stand as it is

    Unhidden
    Unresolved
    And still reaching

    Learning

    The careful art of keeping

  • Woman

    You ask me why I love being a woman.

    I could speak of the ways we are taught to tend.

    To hold, to soften.

    A rocking chair postured in selflessness.

    Moving for others, rarely for itself.

    That is one truth, but not the only one.

    There is a fullness I came to. Without asking.

    Not given, not earned, something that lived in me long before I knew
    how to name it.

    The fullness I carry
    belongs to no one
    who might touch me.

    It is not awakened, it does not wait.

    I have lived in opposition to my own shape, called it discipline, called it virtue.

    Until even silence grew tired of my resistance.

    Now there is no argument.

    My body

    Stands, soft, unrevised.

    If I am loved, it is incidental, a passing light through a room
    already lit.

  • 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.

  • Color • Wake

    Love is

    Not the loud red of arrival

    Not the blue that once named the animal

    But something more patient

    A hue that does not ask to be witnessed

    It gathers in the soft underside of things

    In the pulse behind my wrist

    In the dim gold of late afternoon

    Resting on skin that has known both fire and its absence

    I am no longer painted

    I am permeated

    A slow diffusion

    Like pigment released into water

    Not dissolving

    But becoming indistinguishable from it

    There are colors now that do not belong to sight

    The warmth that lingers after touch

    The quiet violet of being understood

    The pale, infinite white of a moment that asks for nothing

    And still

    Somewhere beneath it all

    A deeper tone remains

    Unnameable, steady as breath beneath sleep

    It does not bloom

    It does not fade

    It moves, slow and certain

    Through every hidden place in me

    Until I am no longer carrying color

    I am the place it comes alive

  • Chromatic • Studies

    Color does not sit on me

    It enters

    The way pigment enters canvas

    Pressed

    Worked in

    Slowly absorbed

    Until it can no longer be removed

    I feel it first

    As a warmth

    A red laid beneath everything

    A ground that breathes through the surface, rising in soft intervals with my pulse

    It is not placed

    It spreads thin at first, a wash of heat, then deepening

    Thickening, until it holds inside me like something alive

    Gold moves differently—

    It lingers

    A glaze across the ribs, caught in the curve of breath

    Like light resting on bare skin just long enough to be felt

    And blue

    Blue opens me

    A slow saturation

    Wet into wet, bleeding through the edges of my body until even the quiet begins to expand

    There is no clean boundary

    No edge that does not soften under contact

    Everything blends

    Color into body, body into language

    Language into something that cannot be separated once it begins

    My hands know this

    The way they move, the way they press, the way they follow what has already started beneath the surface

    Every mark carries sensation

    A pressure, a drag, a yielding

    As if creation itself were a kind of touch that does not stop at the skin

    And I let it happen

    This layering, this slow insistence, this quiet undoing of distance

    Until I am no longer working with color

    But inside it

    Held in it

    Moving with it

    A body that has become its own surface

    Warm

    Open

    Continuously receiving what enters and chooses to stay

  • 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

  • Blue Animal

    YOU ARE

    Like the sea

    You write me

    Inhale me

    YOU ARE

    A cold-lipped, deliberate, blue animal with a memory for bone

    Taking my scattered language

    My driftwood vows

    My soft, collapsing promises and worries

    In your mouth

    YOU ARE

    The shore

    Over the paleness of a white page

    Dragging me across it line by line

    Until my silence leaves a mark

    I have seen your tide

    Bending the nudeness of my body

    Like something hungrier

    Something that loves the undoing of my hands

    Ruining me

    Making relics of what I have tried to forget

    To be continued . .

  • Body of rain

    Rain writes on me

    With a thousand

    Soft hands

    It does not rush

    I walk into it

    As one

    Walks into a memory

    Already known

    Already trembling

    It falls on my mouth

    My eyelids

    The hollow at my neck

    Where even I have hesitated to linger

    And still

    It stays

    As if my body

    Were a country it had always intended to discover slowly

    As if every drop

    Were a vow spoken in water

    Knowing me

    Not all at once

    But completely

  • Symmetries

    Stood inside myself

    As one stands in a garden

    Already bloomed

    Not searching

    Not gathering

    Only aware

    Of the fragrance

    There were moments

    That brushed against me

    Soft as wind through leaves

    They did not carry me away

    I let it pass

    Through the open doors of my senses

    Without closing them

    Without following

    Because I now know

    That not everything

    Must be held

    Some things

    Are meant to be felt

    And left intact

    I remain settled

    In my very own skin

    Intentional

    Unchanged

    Somehow

    More than myself

  • Tender Architecture

    Tilt my throat to the sky

    As if I belong to the sun

    Not to be chosen

    Not to be touched

    But to be taken

    By something

    That does not ask

    My name

    But here

    Light arrives

    Like a blade

    I do not flinch

    I let it see me

    And my pulse that has carried

    Too many unsaid things

    I have been quiet

    In rooms

    That did not deserve me

    I have folded myself

    Into smaller weather

    I do not lower my face

    I do not hide

    The tender architecture

    Of being alive

  • Where noise ends

    I built this house so windows could be more than just an opening to escape from

    There is a chair that remembers the shape of my spine

    A floor that does not demand I stand

    Even the silence here is not silence

    It hums low

    Like a mother

    Half awake – watching

    Her children sleep

    Here – I bring

    My hands to my mouth

    As if to keep something in

    Or to keep the world out

    I am not crying

    But something has already passed through me

    A small

    Deliberate brightness

    Something I chose

    And kept it

    Tonight I feel

    As if I might spill

    But nothing spills

    Only a slow return

    A gathering of scattered light back into the body

    How strange

    To be this tired

    And still feel something holy

    Not joy – not quite

    But the absence of noise

    That lets joy breathe

  • Dear me:

    SUN: Sit and Listen

    “I stride to be

    More useful than your words

    In my absence

    Loneliness comes

    Are you still afraid of the dark

    You connoisseur of light

    Join me, let’s take

    A snapshot of God

    Air here is eternity

    Inexplicable gravitation

    Because here you don’t need a pen”

  • Tactile Nature

    Faithful you

    Noiselessly

    I have left you

    -Underwood

  • March 14

    I have been

    A fire

    A cornerstone

    Inside your mind

    Easier to cry

    When you’re not around

    Because, loving you

    Requieres a soft space

    On the opposite side of my bed

  • rəˈzôlv

    You asked

    If I ever sleep

    I – do

    My mind circles

    In – rəˈzôlv

    This dazzling dark

    And its allegories

    Live above these lines

    You watch me

    And my insufficiencies

    When it comes to love

    And that is okay

    Because without it

    I would not be

    Myself

  • Out’loud

    You come to me

    With hands

    Made of rain

    Annunciatively

    Whispering my name

    In this adverbial space

    I become

    Ever so nervous

    Forever’ly

    I swear

  • Insoluble

    Sometimes

    Brightness

    Feels

    Disfigured

    Shinning

    So innocently

    While I stand

    In what feels like salt water

    Sulfured, perhaps

    Honed by your touch

    Skeptical, by your embrace

    Because in this clarity

    I’ve figured out

    You’re just wrong

    For me

  • Hemostasis

    Doors between us

    You tell me

    Be careful with my head

    These ambitious thoughts

    Must hide them

    Like contraband

    In this reverent space

    I greet you

    Making myself

    An immediate cautery

    Instead of shaking your hand

  • Distance•r

    I see • you

    Bringing rain

    To my hands

    Like a plant • waits

    To become • a tree

    Who am • I

    To • you

    In this whole earth

    Equating love

    For leaves

  • 109

    Orbits of grace

    At the in’s of me

    Right here

    I fall

    110

    Times a day

    Like something

    That still glows

    Tucked, under

    A single address

    My land of traumas

    Heightened with fear

    A place that holds

    My childhood

    So terrifyingly

    Deciphering torment

    And the inability

    To seek help

    From people

    Who watch you

    Fall, in less dirt

    Painful terrains

    This is Cuba – 1979

    Martyrs of disguise

    Making parenthood

    Less fiable

    As everyone

    Is too busy

    Surviving

    Their

    Own

    Imprisonment

    I’ve been

    A lonely walker

    For decades

    This life

    Has taught me

    To believe

    That above my name

    There is a vacancy

    A beautiful sky

    With blue lips

    That speak for me

    Making peace

    For the rest

    Of my existence

    Like a road

    That is long

    Yet spangled

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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 . .

  • 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

  • Early Poems

    This so called, craft

    Floats, steady, and upwards

    Myself, in a time of mirrors

    – August

  • 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

  • Daylight

    Knocking darkness

    Out of nights

    Even in these shadows

    Truthfully speaking

    I prefer daylight

    The hardest

  • Next Train . .

    I am adapting

    Cowardly, but adapting

    This is distinction

    Between surviving

    And existence

  • ‘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

  • Almost . .

    Forgot

    How still

    Your mind is

    This is not

    A compliment

    It’s rhetoric,

    It chokes

    The good parts of me

  • ‘in no particular order’

    Hang over my feet

    Like lousy flowers

    That love just like me

  • For The Love of Blue

    Veils of what I’ve done wrong ..

  • 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

  • Untitled

    Love clamps itself

    Leaving small gaps

    With just enough spaces

    Allowing you to taste

    Your very own tongue

  • L’absente

    Tried to draw

    The sound of you

    All I found, was . .

    A flying crate