Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: Women

  • Human Interior

    I sit motionless
    until the world stops feeling louder
    than my own breathing

    I loosen my hands
    from the steering wheel

    I remind myself
    that fear is not prophecy

    That the nervous system
    can turn uncertainty
    into catastrophe
    if given enough silence

    Outside
    someone returns a shopping cart
    Someone adjusts sunglasses
    beneath a blue sky
    Someone continues living
    without realizing
    another human being nearby
    is quietly trying
    to come back to themselves

    I watch ordinary life carefully
    when this happens

    The woman loading groceries
    The wind moving through trees
    The automatic doors opening and closing

    Small evidence
    that reality remains intact

    Sometimes I lower the windows
    just to feel air move

    Sometimes I put my hand against my chest
    as if calming an injured animal

    Sometimes I say my own name
    softly inside my head
    to remind myself
    I am still here

    And eventually
    the world returns gradually

    Not all at once

    First the parking lot
    Then the sunlight
    Then my body

    Then the understanding
    that I am not losing my mind

    Only carrying too much of it
    at the same time

    Sometimes the tears arrive so quietly
    I notice only the taste

    Salt gathering at the corner of my mouth
    like the body attempting
    to return itself to the sea

    The instinct to disappear
    To heal unseen

    I think I am like cats in that way

    I hide to cure myself

    Inside parked vehicles
    Empty driveways
    Silent kitchens after midnight

    Anywhere the world cannot watch me
    trying to gather myself back together

    Sometimes I taste my own tears
    and think how strange it is
    that grief is made of salt too

    as though the body already understands
    that survival occasionally requires
    licking your own wounds
    in solitude

    Until eventually
    the breathing slows

    The thoughts loosen

    The ordinary world resumes its shape

    And I return quietly to it
    carrying myself carefully
    like something once injured

    still learning
    that not every silence
    means danger

  • Curvature

    At night
    my body becomes aware of you
    the way the sea
    becomes aware of the moon

    Slowly

    Then all at once

    The windows are open
    Rain moves somewhere beyond the trees
    The room smells faintly of oil
    warm cotton
    jasmine dying softly in a glass

    And my skin

    My skin remembers your hands
    with a devotion
    that frightens me

    The way you touched my waist
    as though holding something
    both sacred
    and dangerous

    The restraint of you

    Not taking
    Not claiming

    Only resting your hand there briefly
    while my entire body
    opened beneath the silence of it

    A woman can survive many things

    Loneliness
    Distance
    Even absence

    But gentleness
    gentleness enters the body
    and rearranges it

  • Roofline

    Some nights
    I want to live on the roof

    Not visit it
    Not escape to it briefly

    Live there

    Make a small religion
    out of shingles and weather

    Drag blankets across the incline
    let the night air raise goosebumps along my arms
    learn the language of wind
    instead of human disappointment

    Because roofs understand things
    houses do not

    A house remembers too much

    The rooms hold emotional fingerprints
    The walls repeat old conversations quietly at night
    Even silence feels furnished

    But a roof
    a roof faces the sky directly

    It knows rain intimately
    Knows the ache of August heat
    Knows hail
    lightning
    the slow ruin of seasons
    and still remains open to the atmosphere

    I think I belong
    to that kind of existence now

    Open-air
    Half-feral
    Emotionally exposed to weather

    I imagine myself there at midnight
    flat on my back
    watching clouds drag themselves
    across the moon
    like exhausted thoughts refusing sleep

    The cold fronts arriving first as whispers
    The smell of rain climbing upward from the earth
    Tree branches below me
    thrashing softly in the dark
    like grief trying to become visible

    And for once
    nothing asking anything of me

    No performance
    No explanations
    No pretending the body
    is not carrying entire oceans of feeling
    through ordinary life

    Just me
    and the terrible beautiful atmosphere
    of being alive

    Maybe spring would soften me there

    Maybe summer storms
    would teach me how to come apart correctly

    Maybe winter
    with its clean unbearable cold
    would finally quiet
    the constant machinery of longing
    inside my chest

    And maybe that is why
    I ache for height

    because sadness feels different
    closer to the sky

    Less like drowning
    More like weather

    Passing through
    Electric
    Uncontrollable
    Briefly luminous

    Some nights
    I swear I could sleep there forever
    letting moonlight collect along my skin
    letting rain baptize every memory out of me
    until I became less woman
    and more horizon

    something no longer trapped inside walls
    but stretched endlessly open
    beneath the enormous dark mercy
    of night

  • this fucking love

    it’s not really like me
    to speak this way

    i have always preferred
    to civilize my suffering

    to press it into beautiful language
    where it could be mistaken
    for art instead of ache

    i learned long ago
    how to make loneliness appear elegant

    how to carry devastation
    with composed hands
    how to smile through exhaustion
    how to turn silence
    into something almost holy

    i became very skilled
    at surviving beautifully

    but some loves
    arrive like a hidden fracture beneath ice

    silent at first
    nearly invisible

    until one day
    everything beneath you gives way

    and suddenly
    there you are

    standing inside the carefully ordered structure
    of your own life
    surrounded by rituals
    responsibility
    and the exhausting dignity
    of self-containment

    realizing your body
    has begun longing again
    against your permission

    then someone enters your solitude gently

    looks at you too carefully
    learns your exhaustion by sight
    touches you
    as though your sadness
    is something fragile enough
    to deserve tenderness

    so forgive me

    this is not usually how i speak

    but fuck

    ‘This Fucking Love’ | Charcoal

    i saw the holiest parts of myself
    ruined by this fucking love

    not ruined like fire ruins a house
    no
    ruined the way salt ruins water
    quietly
    completely
    until nothing inside you tastes the same again

    God . .
    what a vulgar miracle it is
    to meet someone late in life
    who reaches into you
    like he has lived there before

    i am not talking about lust

    ‘This Fucking Love

    lust is a bright bird
    striking itself against the dark glass of night
    beautiful
    frantic
    gone by morning

    i am talking about the terrible holiness
    of someone learning your exhaustion by sight
    of someone hearing the difference
    between your public laugh
    and the real one
    of someone touching your leg
    like he is trying to calm an animal
    he does not want to scare away

    this fucking love

    has me feeling

    like i could literally crawl out of my skin
    carrying this ache in my chest
    like contraband

    at work
    at stoplights
    answering emails
    pretending to discuss ordinary things
    while internally
    an entire cathedral is collapsing in slow motion

    because the body knows

    the body knows
    when another body feels like home

    and maybe that is the most frightening part

    not that this love appeared
    but that after all these years
    all this surviving
    all this pretending to be beyond devastation

    still

    i opened the door

    to this fucking love

    ‘This Fucking Love | Charcoal

  • 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

  • Preface of a Harbor

    A woman facing water

    Preface of a Harbor | Charcoal

    Has existed in art longer than memory itself
    waiting
    grieving
    remembering
    becoming

    The harbor is not merely a place in these sketches
    It is the human condition
    the shoreline between staying and leaving

    Smudging of a Harbor | Graphite

    I drew the figure again and again in charcoal
    because charcoal behaves like memory
    it smudges
    disappears
    darkens where touched too often

    And the lighthouse became abstract on purpose

    Some people are not meant to be rendered clearly
    Some loves survive only in silhouette

    “Harbor | Charcoal

    So I kept stripping the image down
    less harbor
    less certainty
    more white space
    more silence
    until all that remained
    was a woman
    an ocean
    and the unbearable softness
    of standing still
    while something inside her
    kept drifting toward shore

  • Wooden Box

    If I could
    I would place every fear I have for my sons
    inside a small wooden box
    and leave it out in the yard

    I think about that box often

    I imagine it sitting there alone beneath the weather
    the grass growing slowly around it
    rainwater darkening the wood
    August heat opening tiny cracks along the lid

    A plain little box
    holding all the unbearable parts of motherhood

    At first
    the box would have held small things

    Fevers in the middle of the night
    Tiny shoes by the door
    The sound of them crying from another room
    The terrible helplessness of hearing your child cough
    while the whole dark house waits with you

    Back then
    I thought motherhood was about protecting

    I did not yet understand
    that motherhood is mostly about enduring

    ‘Motherhood’

    So the years passed
    and the box grew heavier

    Into it went first heartbreaks
    Late-night drives
    Silences
    The fear that arrives when your children begin
    walking further and further away from your arms

    And now my sons are men

    Men in uniform
    Men standing inside realities
    I cannot soften for them

    ‘Motherhood’

    So now the box holds oceans

    It holds unanswered messages
    It holds the terrible imagination of mothers
    It holds the sound of a phone not ringing
    It holds every silent prayer
    I have whispered into the light

    If I could
    I would leave the box outside forever

    ‘Motherhood’

    I would let rain kneel over it through the night
    Let thunder shake it open
    Let wind carry pieces of my fear away
    through the trees

    I would let winter freeze it stiff
    Let summer split the wood apart slowly
    until the earth itself
    began carrying some of the weight for me

    Because I am tired
    of carrying the box inside my body

    Tired of setting it beside my coffee each morning
    Tired of carrying it room to room invisibly
    while the world continues normally around me

    And still
    when I close my eyes
    the box becomes lighter again

    Inside it

    I find warm little hands clenched in mine
    Their laughter moving through the hallway

    Maybe that is the true shape of motherhood

    a small wooden box
    filled first with tenderness
    then with fear
    then with all the love in the world
    a human being can no longer survive carrying alone

  • 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.

  • Tired

    I am tired in the way a city is tired
    after sirens have dragged themselves through every artery of it

    I am tired in the shoulders of women who carry invisible ledgers—who balance grief with groceries

    I am tired of being the room that holds men who do not live in it

    I am tired of almost

    tired of being almost chosen
    almost held
    almost enough

    do you know what that does
    to a woman who has already given
    all the versions of herself
    she once promised she would protect

    it teaches her
    how to disappear
    politely

    I am tired of the strange holiness of contradiction
    how a man can bow his head to God
    and lift his hands to me
    without ever saying my name out loud

    I am tired of swallowing the moment

    I am so tired

    tired enough to finally admit
    that I have been generous
    where I should have been guarded

    open
    where I should have been still

    So — tonight

    I will take back my hands
    from where they reached too far

  • already yours

    there is a bird in the hinge

    you know it

    in the moment you almost choose yourself and don’t

    I kept mine quiet, called it strength

    it wasn’t —just

    fear, well-behaved

    it learned my breath, waited, pressed

    until I felt it

    so here—take him

    and know—color is effortless the moment you stop holding it back

  • 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

  • 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

  • Omissions III

    you don’t say it
    but it rides shotgun anyway

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    window down, elbow out, that quiet between us doing all the talking like a highway that forgot where it was going

    you ever notice that?

    how a thing can live
    without ever being born just pacing the inside of your chest like a stray that found the door
    but won’t come in

    that’s us

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    you trim the truth
    like a man shaving in bad light

    leave just enough shadow to look like something real

    and I sit there—feeling the weight of it

    I become a sound you almost say and then don’t—and it echoes louder than if you had

    that’s where I live with you

    in the almost
    in the inch before contact
    in the breath you take
    right before you decide not to cross it

    and it’s not that you don’t feel it

    I’ve seen it
    in the way your voice slows down
    like it’s trying not to wake something up

    in the way you stay too long for a man who’s just passing through

    you linger like a question you already know the answer to
    but won’t ask

    and me

    I let it happen
    I let the silence build a house around us
    no doors
    no windows
    just walls made of everything we won’t admit

    funny thing is
    it feels warm in there

    safe, almost

    until it doesn’t

    until you leave
    and the air changes
    and I’m standing in the middle of something
    that never had a name

    Held in Omissions (watercolor)

    trying to explain to myself how something so present can still be missing

    how a man can hold you
    without ever really touching you

    how omission
    quiet, careful, deliberate omission

    can feel more intimate
    than truth

    and here’s the part that stays

    not you
    you go, you always go
    back to the life that has edges, definitions, doors that close

    but this—this unfinished thing this almost this sentence that refuses its period

    it lingers

    in the coffee cup you didn’t finish
    in the chair that still leans toward me
    in the air that remembers the shape of your voice

    and I

    I finally see it for what it is

    not love
    not absence

    but a corridor

    long, dim, echoing
    where we met halfway
    and decided
    without saying it

    to never reach the end

  • Omissions

    I don’t catch you in lies you’re too careful for that.

    You hand me daylight
    without ever mentioning the night you walked through.

    And I
    I stand there, holding a clean sentence feeling the dirt underneath it.

    Something is always missing but never named.

    Like a chair pulled out
    from a table I didn’t see set.

    Like a door still warm
    from being closed
    just before I arrived.

    You speak in completed thoughts, but I hear the hinge—that small metallic truth swinging somewhere just outside the room.

    I tried to name you like weather, to soften the edges of you—but even storms confess.

    Even the tide tells on itself.

    So I begin to doubt
    my own architecture

    maybe the house was always this uneven

    maybe the floor was meant to tilt like this

    maybe the silence is mine.

    But no—it’s the way you curate reality like a careful museum
    every absence framed
    as if it belongs.

    And I walk through it,
    quiet, hands behind my back, trying not to touch
    what isn’t there.

    To be continued

  • 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

  • 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

  • Love Lives Here

    I step out of my home
    and the wind, gentle and unhurried

    Finds the curve of my spine

    Like a hand remembering a shape it once held

    The trees in their full green bodies

    The sky without boundary

    The birds

    Writing their quick signatures across it

    And I, too, am written there

    I do not deny what stirs in me

    I include it

    This warmth that leans toward another

    It belongs to the same order as sunlight

    As breath

    As the turning of the earth

    I say there is love here

    And the feeling is ethereal
    Yet rooted

  • 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.

  • Instructions

    He tells me not to cross my legs

    So I sit as one might sit

    Watching

    Not interfering too quickly

    My legs

    So used to folding like branches seeking each other

    Now rest apart

    Two quiet limbs learning distance

    They say a narrowing

    I imagine it as a path in the woods

    Grown thin with seasons

    A place where light enters more carefully

    Where even the smallest step must be placed with intention

    There is a restlessness in me

    Not loud, but persistent

    Like wind moving through tall grass just out of sight

    My body remembers
    what it once did without asking

    It leans toward itself,
    tries to close, to return to the comfort of its own shape

    And I stop it, gently now

    Not with force
    Just a quiet redirection

    In this small act I begin to notice more

    The weight of my own presence

    The way I occupy space

    The subtle shifting
    of balance and breath

    And then something softer embraces me

    Feels like dusk settling over a field

    Like water finding its level

    A knowing that I do not have to hold all of this by effort alone

    I imagine being carried the way the earth carries root

    The way the river carries stone

    Not by removing them

    But making room
    for their passage

    So I sit

    In this small

    Altered posture

    As if my body itself
    were a landscape

    Asking me to walk it

  • Footnotes

    There is a quiet, lodged in my spine

    Not mercy, not rest

    A held breath that has learned to last

    They call it L5
    They dress it in tidy syllables

    Compression

    Degeneration

    Small, sterile consolations

    For something that does not console

    My body refuses neatness

    It speaks in pressure
    In the slow persuasion of weight

    In the way a column leans and does not admit it

    In the way it carries
    long past asking

    Some days it rises like a verdict

    Not loud, never theatrical, only exact

    YOU WILL MOVE
    BUT DIFFERENTLY

    And I do

    I rise into it

    Into the narrow corridor of standing

    Into the careful arithmetic of steps

    Measuring what remains against what is required

    There are mornings
    when my body feels older than light

    As if time has settled in me unevenly

    Heavier in the places no one sees

    And still
    there is no audience for this

    No ceremony
    for the quiet labor
    of holding oneself together

    Only this private endurance

    This unremarked fidelity to movement

    I have bent around it

    Reshaped myself to accommodate the untied

    Made room for the ache
    as one makes room
    for a difficult truth

    And somewhere in that making, something fierce remained

    Not untouched, but unwilling to disappear

    The spine bends, but it does not relinquish me

    It holds, not gently, not kindly, but with a severity that resembles grace

    I have learned that faith is not brightness, not relief, not even hope as it is often spoken

    FAITH, is this . .

    The quiet decision to stand again inside a body that has already asked too much of itself

    To move, when movement is no longer given, but taken

    Step by deliberate step

    To carry what has no language

    And so

    I proceed, revised, contained

    Still bearing my own weight

    Not because I am unbroken

    But because
    I did not leave when breaking began

  • Utmost love

    Does God have a voice

    Does it speak in flowers

    Must be magical

    In a desire no less luminance’d

    Than a birthing womb

    A miraculous fortress

    With no sounds or wounds

    Resolute and most bright

    -Motherhood

  • To my sons

    When I struggle

    With your absence

    You call me

    My stomach beats

    A thousand marches

    Aches to be so many miles away

    If I had no sight

    I could find you both

    In the greatest of multitudes

    This haptic perception

    Reminds me

    That light

    Is sufficient

    If you dare to see it

  • Catalina

    The day my mother married

    Hers, weeped

    Futurity of leaving Cuba, gone

    She grieved her only child

    All efforts to bring her home, futile

    Through the years

    And under a fleet of angels

    I saw myself

    Reflected in her

    Superbly waiting for motherhood

    Incessant fire, love that burns

    Like a tower, in me

  • When I can’t sleep . .

    I think of color

    Conte technique

    Over this pillow

    I shade pebbles

    Greater than your hands

    Scattering through debris of seeds

    In a place with so few trees

    Hearing your echo intertwined with mine

    What is ‘this’ passion

    If you can’t meet me halfway

    Sometimes

    You feel like a void

    That I follow

    Without following you

    A portraiture

    The tonality

    Of a single text

  • Instant

    You make my flame slow

    It’s not what I give that smokes

    To draw what we both can’t kill

    In this mackerel atmosphere

    I love you

    Down tidily

    Waist deep

    Men like you

    More absolute

    A general liberty to sting

  • Realities

    My dad would always tell me, repeatedly.

    ‘You don’t pick the wrong men, they pick you’

    This always resonates when finding myself in that sort of situation.

    I’m quite imperfect couldn’t keep a marriage, not for lack of trying.

    Tried to give my sons the illusion of balance. That didn’t last, it was soul crushing.

    My sons are now grown men, and have a clear understanding of my side of the story.

    Yes, there are two sides.

    A high percentage of women leave – to live – not to be with someone else.

    I’ve lived, loved, and raised two men.

    Empty nest, feels loud.

    Their happiness and relationships, validates all efforts.

  • Line _ drawn in me

  • Dark Bright

    Lover you

    Over my brow

    Can I touch you

    In this firmament

  • 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

  • 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

  • Time . .

    There’s one

    There’s two

    There’s three

    Of me

    In this triplicity

    I count aphorisms

    When it’s difficult

    To speak . .

  • Here Comes the Sun

    You can’t

    Start a fight

    In a lonely

    Home . .

  • 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

  • Next Train . .

    I am adapting

    Cowardly, but adapting

    This is distinction

    Between surviving

    And existence

  • Poetry

    My mercy

    A need to substitute

    My mouth, for a dream

    Different homes

    Pincushions for doorknobs

    Damnit I love you

  • ‘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

  • Edge of Time

    Thought

    Much less

    of me

    Flask-less-ly

    You waited

    Like spirits

    Hanging over

  • 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

  • Untitled

    Love clamps itself

    Leaving small gaps

    With just enough spaces

    Allowing you to taste

    Your very own tongue