Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: vulnerability

  • Three Lines

    I carried you
    like a glass of water
    through a burning house.

  • Maybe

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

    A sky without distance.

    Why?

    I don’t know.

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

    Love, especially.

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

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

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

    Not because I wanted to reach you.

    Or maybe I did.

    I don’t know.

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

    And maybe that’s the whole point.

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

  • The Secret Performance of Normalcy

    Sometimes
    I just want to tell you

    hold me for a second.

    That’s all.

    I need another body
    to tell me
    where mine is.

    I know how that sounds.

    So I fix my hair.

    Keep talking.

    Ask you something
    about your day.

    You answer.

    I nod

    in all the right places.

  • 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.