Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: vulnerability

  • Before It Had to Be Named

    I have never told a man
    I loved him first.

    Not because I didn’t.

    Because I believed
    love should recognize itself
    before it had to be named.

    I thought if it was true,
    it would arrive on your lips
    before it ever reached mine.

    Then you happened.

    For the first time,
    I wanted to say it.

    I carried those words
    like water in my mouth,
    afraid that if I spoke,
    I would lose
    both the water
    and the thirst.

    So I said nothing.

    Instead, I loved you like the wind—

    the wind that finds your face
    before you have opened your eyes,

    that moves through your hair
    and catches in your breath,

    leaving you to wonder
    what your heart remembered
    that your mind could not name.

    It hurts to love you
    because the feeling is real
    and has nowhere to go.

    No place in your life
    where it can remain.

    So I carry it into mornings,
    into songs I cannot finish,
    into every quiet place
    that still makes room for you.

    I have questioned everything else—

    my judgment,
    my timing,
    the meaning of your silence.

    But never this.

    Never the love.

    I only wanted one impossible thing:

    for you to know
    that somewhere in this world,

    you were loved
    by a woman who had never told a man
    she loved him first—

    and still could not bring herself
    to tell you.

    So if, on some ordinary morning,
    the wind finds your face,

    lingers for just a moment
    and catches in your breath—

    let it be enough.

    Let it carry the words
    I could not.

  • I Never Let Her Exist

    Sometimes I am tired of being me.

    I have been with myself
    for as long as I can remember,
    and I have never learned
    how to leave myself alone.

    I notice everything.

    A change in someone’s voice.
    A silence that lasts too long.
    Something I said three days ago
    that no one else remembers.

    I return to things
    that have already ended
    as though there might be something there
    I missed the first time.

    There usually is.

    That is part of the problem.

    I have made myself uncomfortable
    for as long as I can remember.

    I don’t know when I began
    watching myself this closely.

    I am tired of my own reflection,
    not because I hate the woman in it,
    but because I never simply let her exist.

    I am always doing something to her.

    Fixing.
    Forgiving.
    Remembering.
    Reconsidering.

    Even inside my own body,
    I move the furniture.

    I turn her face toward the light
    and then away from it.

    I look too closely.

    At my face.
    My body.
    My age.
    The things I should have done differently.
    The people I should have stopped missing
    a long time ago.

    Nothing in me
    is ever allowed to simply be.

    Not even happiness.

    I examine that too.

    How long will it last?
    What will ruin it?
    Who will leave?

    I ask too much of her.

    Be younger.
    Be wiser.
    Be less afraid.

    Stop missing people
    who can live without you.

    Stop needing answers
    from people who have chosen silence.

    Stop going back
    to the exact place something hurt
    just to see if it still does.

    It does.

    I go back anyway.

    Sometimes I wonder
    when I became someone
    I was responsible for correcting.

    When did I stop being a person
    and become a problem
    I was always trying to solve?

    She has carried every version of me
    without ever being allowed
    to put one down.

    And still,

    I stand in front of her
    looking for what needs fixing.

    She must be exhausted.

    I know I am.

  • 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.

  • I Was Left Without One

  • Stanza Is the Bone

    A stanza is the bone.

    Nothing—
    not even a life—
    can be carried
    all at once.

    Everything else
    is me
    trying not to come apart
    in public.

    My hand around my ankle

    like I am keeping

    some part of me

    from leaving.

    My body
    wrapped in denim.

    My whole life
    pretending
    this is just a way
    to sit.

    I feel
    so temporary.

    The bracelet.

    The shoe.

    The watercolor flowers
    beneath my skin.

    I needed evidence

    that I was here.

    That I could drown
    inside myself

    and still come up
    breathing.