Mari Sánchez Cayuso

Tag: Women

  • No Patience for Plath

    My mother says I cannot speak like a normal person. She says every conversation with me turns into a metaphor with no parking.

    “Talk to me like a human being,” she says. “I don’t need a poem. I asked you a question.”

    And I laugh, because she is right.

    Then I tell her, “Well, I’m not human. So why would I speak to you like one?”

    This, of course, does not help.

    She looks at me like I have personally insulted common sense.

    “Enough.”

    “Speak normally.”

    But somewhere along the way, my thoughts stopped walking in straight lines. They started taking the scenic route, turning left where everyone else would have simply answered.

    And please understand—

    this is incredibly amusing to me.

    Because my mother is not a woman without language. No. My mother has language. She can say one sentence and make it sound like a door being thrown open during a storm.

    So when she tells me not to speak in poetry, do you understand how funny that is?

    This woman, who can slice the air with one sentence, wants me to hand her plain bread.

    I own the entire collection of Sylvia Plath.

    Every book.

    Every page.

    Every bruise.

    I have not opened a single one in over a decade. Not because I stopped admiring her. I didn’t.

    It is just that somewhere along the way, those books became less about Sylvia Plath and more about my mother.

    Once, while we were rearranging books, I left my Sylvia Plath collection on the coffee table. My mother and I both own a ridiculous number of books, but I do not write in mine. I do not underline. I leave the pages alone.

    So when I came back and saw ink on Sylvia Plath, I almost left my body.

    My mother had underlined things.

    Not gently.

    Not in pencil.

    Ink.

    On the page.

    In my book.

    As if Sylvia Plath had not already suffered enough.

    Then she looked at me and asked, “Does this make any sense to you?”

    And I said, “Well, you have to look at her from where she was standing.”

    My mother shook her head.

    “This is the most heartbreaking thing. There is no joy in these books.”

    And I was upset.

    Obviously.

    Because again,

    actual ink.

    But I also laughed, because somehow my mother had managed to vandalize Sylvia Plath and prove my entire point at the same time.

    Ever since that day, I have quoted Sylvia Plath to my mother every chance I get. Not because I’m feeling particularly Plath-like. Not always.

    Sometimes I do it simply because she underlined my books.

    This is what you get.

    You touch my Sylvia Plath, and now you have to live with Sylvia Plath.

    Forever.

    Every now and then, she’ll ask, “What are you doing today? What plans do you have?”

    And instead of saying work, errands, laundry, coffee, like a normal daughter, I’ll answer,

    “I desire the things which will destroy me in the end”

    She closes her eyes.

    And I smile, because she knows.

    This has nothing to do with today.

    This is an old debt.

    The punishment for underlining my books.

    And I have every intention of collecting it for the rest of her life.

    My mother has no patience for Sylvia Plath.

    To me, she is a poet.

    To my mother, she is a weather warning. A pressure drop. A room losing air. An anxiety rash waiting to happen.

    The kind of poet who makes my mother’s soul reach for antihistamines.

    Too much ache.

    Too much bell jar.

    Too much woman

    making pain
    answer back.

    So when my mother tells me not to speak in metaphors, I try.

    I really do.

    But I don’t know where normal ends and language begins.

    I have never been fluent
    in ordinary.

    My mind

    has always preferred

    the long way home.

  • Window Seat

    Sometimes

    I am fine

    but my soul
    needs a window seat.

    One of those
    last-minute flights
    they’re always advertising.

    You know the kind.

    Cheap enough
    to make you suspicious.

    The kind where
    you don’t ask questions

    because questions
    are how you end up
    staying home.

    I don’t care
    if they put me
    in the last row.

    If the seat
    doesn’t recline.

    At this point

    I just want to go.

    Not because
    I am broken.

    Because sometimes

    melancholy
    needs a different sky.

    A street
    that has never seen me
    overthink.

    A café
    where my name
    means nothing

    except coffee.

    A museum
    where I can stand
    in front of a painting

    and let someone else’s blue
    explain me
    for a while.

    I don’t want
    a perfect trip.

    I want forty-eight hours

    where my mind
    stops chewing
    on the same sentence.

    Where silence
    is not punishment.

    Not waiting.

    Not something
    I have to translate.

    Just clouds.

    Just engines.

    Just me

    pressed against
    a little airplane window

    watching the world
    get small enough

    to forgive.

  • Between Windows

    I look at this

    and I don’t think

    how beautiful.

    I wonder

    how much

    the woman

    who handed over the egg

    had left

    for herself.

    Because in Cuba

    even generosity

    has a cost.

    An egg

    passed between two windows

    is never

    just an egg.

    It is one woman

    looking at another

    and quietly deciding,

    I’ll have one less today.

    And still

    my country

    lives this way

    loving

    in the dark.

  • Silence Ruins Me

    People think
    silence is empty.

    It isn’t.

    Silence is busy.

    It builds stories.

    It invents endings.

    It fills rooms
    with conversations
    that never happened.

    It asks questions

    no one
    is there
    to answer.

    Yes

    silence ruins me.

    Not because
    I need constant words.

    I love quiet.

    I love mornings
    before the world
    wakes up.

    I love evenings
    when the sky
    can’t decide
    whether it’s blue
    or black.

    I love the sound
    of water
    doing nothing
    but falling.

    What ruins me

    is the silence

    that arrives

    where honesty
    should have been.

    The silence

    that asks me

    to imagine

    instead of know.

    Maybe that’s why

    I argue
    with inanimate objects.

    My phone
    at least
    has the decency

    to remind me
    it’s bedtime.

    Even the moon

    half-hidden
    behind branches

    still lets me know

    it’s there.

    It’s only people

    who disappear

    while leaving

    everything

    unsaid.

    Yes.

    Silence ruins me.

    Not because
    it is quiet.

    Because it is loud enough

    to make me hear

    every fear

    I was trying

    not to believe.

  • My Own Hands

    I thought God
    would answer
    with thunder.

    Instead

    God left me
    with my own hands.

    How cruel.

    How holy.

    To be placed
    inside a life
    that keeps breaking

    and still feel
    something in me

    rise.

    Not clean.

    Not saved.

    Not even brave.

    Just this blue ache
    dragging itself
    out of the dark

    one trembling line
    at a time.

    I have begged
    without calling it begging.

    I have reached
    for things
    that could not stay.

    For people.
    For mercy.
    For proof
    that I was not alone
    inside my own body.

    And still—

    my hand rises.

    As if some part of me
    knows something
    I keep forgetting.

    As if love
    left a signal
    under my skin.

    As if God
    did not come down
    because God
    was already here

    moving through
    the ruin

    teaching my own hands

    how to reach me.

  • The Reach

    I have only begged
    one man.

    God.

    Well…

    That isn’t true.

    God isn’t a man.

    See?

    This is why language
    frustrates me.

    What I mean is—

    the only being
    I have ever fallen apart in front of
    is God.

    Not because
    He needed convincing.

    Because I did.

    I have never begged
    another soul.

    Not to stay.

    Not to love me.

    Not to choose me.

    I have always believed

    that if I had to beg

    the answer
    had already been given.

    Maybe that’s why
    this has unsettled me.

    Not because
    I lost myself.

    Because for one brief terrible moment

    I thought about it.

  • Waiting

    We must stop meeting like this—

    me arriving just before four in the morning
    with another part of my life still clinging to me.

    You are already here.
    Already open.
    Already waiting.

    As if you knew
    I would find my way back.

    I always do.

    Not because I have something beautiful to say
    but because there are nights when language
    is the only place I can set something down
    without dropping it.

    So I bring it here—

    the conversations that refuse to end
    the silences that somehow say more
    the people who stay with me
    long after they’ve gone.

    You have seen me do this before—

    turn memory into metaphor
    grief into something I can look at
    without looking away.

    You remember the woman who thought
    she had imagined her entire existence.

    The one who searched old photographs
    looking for proof
    that she had once been alive.

    You never corrected her.
    You never hurried her.

    You simply waited.

    Patiently enough that one day
    I stopped wondering
    whether I belonged here.

    I should come to you with lighter things—

    coffee
    my sons
    the morning sun finding the kitchen floor

    ridiculous things my cats do
    that make me laugh
    when I wasn’t planning to.

    I should tell you about the days
    that didn’t leave a bruise.

    Maybe one day I will.

    But not tonight.

    Tonight
    I found my way back.

    And there you were—

    exactly where I left you.

    Still waiting.

  • It’s Me Again

    I wasn’t planning on writing tonight.

    But I have learned not to trust that sentence.

    In 2011, I gave my thoughts a room and called it a blog.

    God.

    That feels strange to say out loud.

    Back then, metaphor found me when my mind was losing its grip. I decorated grief. Not because I was brave. Because I didn’t know what else to do with it. I made it beautiful so I could survive looking at it.

    There were times I felt like I had imagined my entire existence. Not metaphorically. Literally. Like my life had become something I dreamed and forgot waking up.

    So I went looking for myself.

    Photographs. Drawers. Memories.

    Anything that could prove I was here.

    This happened.

    I happened.

    Then my father died and something happened to language. Not all at once. More like a room growing quiet until one day you realize the conversation is gone.

    So I retired this blog as if it had never existed. As if words could be cremated too.

    Years passed.

    Life happened.

    The kind of life that sounds impossible when you place it all inside one sentence.

    And now here I am posting so much it is almost comical. Rapid-fire confessions from a woman who keeps insisting she wasn’t going to write today.

    The truth is, I don’t like to say I’m a writer. Because I’m not.

    I am just a woman trying to understand why an ordinary thing can suddenly split open and reveal an entire lifetime.

    Because I don’t really write about what I’m writing about.

    The thing is never the thing.

    A refrigerator is not a refrigerator. A sunset is not a sunset. A silence is never just silence.

    Everything opens. Everything has a second mouth.

    And some feelings arrive so hungry they refuse to leave until they are fed.

    So I leave them here. Not because they are beautiful. Not because they are finished. Because I am tired of being the only place they exist.

    And maybe that is all this blog ever was.

    Not a stage.

    Not proof.

    A room.

    A small room inside the noise.

    Somewhere my thoughts could sit down before I had to become a person again.

  • Two Women

    Myself and I.

    There are two of us.

    One wakes up
    and opens the curtains.

    The other
    is still holding the night
    by its throat.

    One says
    get dressed.

    The other says
    not yet

    I am still bleeding
    in a place
    the day has no permission
    to enter.

    One makes coffee
    answers messages
    finds the keys
    remembers her name.

    The other
    stands barefoot
    inside the body

    asking God
    to lower the volume.

    I have lived this way
    for years.

    One woman surviving.

    One woman witnessing.

    One woman
    holding the morning together
    with whatever light
    she can steal
    from the curtains.

    One woman
    coming undone
    quietly enough
    not to frighten
    the furniture.

    And I am tired.

    Tired of splitting myself
    just to make it
    through a day

    that keeps asking me
    to be ordinary.

    Tired of sending
    one half of me
    into the world

    washed, dressed
    polite

    while the other half
    kneels somewhere
    inside me
    swallowing thunder
    swallowing the scream
    before it becomes sound.

    But this morning
    I did not silence her.

    I did not tell her
    to behave.

    I did not dress the ache
    in something pretty

    so the day
    could tolerate me.

    This morning
    I let both of us speak.

    No shame.

    No performance.

    No small lie
    to make the sorrow
    easier to hold.

    Just myself
    and I

    two women
    inside one name

    one carrying the keys

    one carrying the dark

    both tired
    of being alone
    with me.

    And maybe healing
    is not becoming
    one woman again.

    Maybe healing
    is opening the door

    and letting every version
    of myself

    come home.

  • Woman

    I was never good at portraits.

    Bone structure
    killed the feeling.

    The jaw.
    The eyes.
    The terrible need
    to make someone
    recognizable.

    I did not want
    to measure his face.

    I wanted to survive
    what it had done to me.

    So I did not draw him.

    I drew the woman.

    Lowered.

    Covered in the grey
    I could no longer keep
    inside my body.

    She makes me shiver

    because she is not asking
    for anything.

    Not an answer.

    Not a hand.

    Not a man
    to turn around
    and say her name.

    She simply stands there
    with the weight
    made visible.

    And I understand her.

    Because there are things
    that live inside us
    until art gives them
    somewhere else to go.

    I needed an image
    before language
    kept me hostage.

    Before one thought
    became another thought
    became a room
    I could not exit.

    So I gave it no face.

    No mouth.

    No tired eyes
    to forgive.

    I gave it a woman.

    And somehow
    that frightened me more.

    Because she was quiet.

    Because she was beautiful.

    Because she looked
    like the part of me
    that had stopped waiting.

  • Pride and You

    Pride
    is a beautiful blade
    until it starts turning
    in your hand.

    I have seen it
    sit in a man’s mouth
    for days

    polished
    silent
    starving.

    You wear yours
    like a clean shirt.

    Buttoned high.
    No blood showing.

    But I know.

    I know the climate
    inside a closed room.

    I know the sound
    of a door
    pretending
    it was never opened.

    And you

    you keep standing there
    with the whole river in you

    acting thirsty.

    A man can build a bridge over a river
    and still drown in a sentence.

    That is the tragedy.

    Not that you feel nothing.

    That would be easier.

    It is that you feel
    and still choose
    the museum of yourself.

    Everything behind glass.

    Your hands.
    Your fear.
    Your almost.

    Even your tenderness
    walks in late

    wearing someone else’s coat.

    And me?

    I am tired
    of being the fire
    that makes a coward
    feel warm.

    I am tired
    of being the mirror
    a man visits
    only when he wants
    to remember
    he is alive.

    Pride in me
    has no throne.

    It is not made
    of stop
    or silence.

    It is a woman
    standing barefoot
    in the middle
    of her own storm

    saying

    I loved you.

    Then saying

    and still.

    Still
    I will not live
    inside the small room
    your fear prepared for me.

    Still
    I will not make
    a religion
    out of waiting.

    Still
    I will not confuse
    your closed mouth
    for depth.

    You may keep
    the key.

    I was never
    waiting
    to be opened.

  • She is Prose

    In one photograph
    my mother is carrying me.

    In the other
    I am carrying my son.

    Same age.

    Two women
    holding their children
    before life asked them
    to prove
    they could survive
    being left.

    She had me.

    I had him.

    And between us
    something was left open

    not a lesson

    not a punishment

    just the door
    life forgot
    to close gently.

    My mother was six
    when they left her.

    Six.

    A little girl
    in a room
    that was not home

    a bed
    that did not know
    her body

    a hallway
    with no mother
    coming through it.

    People always have reasons.

    Divorce.
    Distance.
    Survival.
    History.
    Fear.

    But children
    do not live
    inside reasons.

    They live inside rooms.

    They listen
    for footsteps.

    They learn the door
    before they learn
    the world.

    And still

    that child
    became my mother.

    The best mother.

    She is prose.

    Not simple.

    Never simple.

    Prose like rice.
    Laundry.
    Hands.
    A forehead checked for fever.
    Call me when you get there.

    Prose like love
    with its sleeves rolled up.

    She was a writer

    but before I knew
    her words on paper

    I knew the language
    she made in the house.

    Food.
    Worry.
    Sacrifice.

    The daily grammar
    of staying.

    She made motherhood
    her full-time work

    until it became
    the pillars
    holding up
    our house.

    Then there I am

    same age

    with my son
    inside my life

    still young enough
    to believe
    being loved
    meant being held.

    And life
    asked me too.

    Not at six.

    Not in a school.

    But in the room
    where a woman
    should never be left

    with a newborn
    and a body
    still open
    from becoming
    a door for life.

    I learned then
    what my mother
    must have known
    too early:

    that something
    can leave the room
    and still live
    in the body.

    But I stayed.

    Not beautifully.

    Not without fear.

    But I stayed.

    And maybe
    that is what passed
    between us.

    Not the eyes.

    Not the mouth.

    The terrible grace
    of becoming
    the place
    a child can return to.

    She answered
    with a house.

    I answered
    with my arms.

    Two women.

    Same age.

    Different photographs.

    Both carrying
    a child
    against the oldest
    kind of fear.

    And still

    nothing in us
    handed the child
    back to the dark.

    She stayed.

    I stayed.

    And maybe
    that is the holiest thing
    a woman can do

    after the door
    has taught her
    its cruelty

    stand there

    with the child
    in her arms

    and refuse
    to become
    another leaving.

  • Metaphors Bleed

    Even metaphors bleed.

    That is why I trust them.

    Because they do not arrive clean.

    They come dragging the night behind them
    carrying feathers
    carrying bandages
    carrying the red little truth
    plain language was too afraid to touch.

    A wound is not only a wound.

    It is a mouth
    the body grows
    when silence
    has stayed too long.

    And language

    keeps coming back
    with blood on its knees

    trying to name
    what touched me

    without becoming
    the hand
    that hurt me.

    But this is what I know.

    Everything I make beautiful
    has first passed
    through the wound.

    The bird.
    The night.
    The bandage.
    The sternum.

    All of it
    came from the same place.

    All of it
    left red.

    So no

    I am not cured.

    I don’t even know
    if I want to be.

    I only know
    the wound keeps opening

    and language keeps entering

    and somehow

    I keep calling that
    survival.

  • Out of My Body

    Out of my body.

    That is how today feels.

    Like I am here
    but not all the way.

    Like some part of me
    stepped out quietly

    and did not turn around
    when I called.

    So I grip myself.

    Not for beauty.

    For keeping.

    Because the self
    is a fragile thing
    when sorrow
    keeps touching it.

    I have cried
    as much
    as it rained
    on my city.

    And still
    nothing in me
    feels washed clean.

    There are days
    I do not recognize
    myself.

    Because wanting to forget
    can make a stranger
    out of your own skin.

    Because ache
    does not always cry.

    Sometimes it enters the body
    and moves the furniture.

    Sometimes it sits
    where the breath should be

    and refuses
    to explain itself.

    Because silence
    can stand in a room
    like another person

    and still
    say nothing.

    Maybe reincarnation
    is not returning
    as someone else.

    Maybe it is waking up
    inside the same woman

    again

    after every grief
    that promised
    to finish her.

    And still

    my hand stays.

    Tired.

    Human.

    Holding.

    As if tenderness
    has nowhere else
    to go.

    As if I am both
    the one falling

    and the one
    who cannot bear
    to let her fall.

    Because I have already lost
    so many versions of myself

    I cannot afford
    to lose this one too.

  • Imperative

    Leave.

    Verb.

    Imperative.

    A word
    with its door open.

    Not a question.

    Not a wound
    asking to be kissed.

    Not stay
    dressed in hope.

    Leave.

    A command
    the body understands
    before the heart
    stops arguing.

    Subject implied:

    you.

    Object implied:

    what is killing you.

    The hand is stained.

    The road is waiting.

    The woman
    does not turn around.

    Even grammar knows

    some sentences
    save themselves

    by ending.

  • Sixteen Years

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

    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

    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

    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 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.

    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.

  • 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.

  • Two of You

    There must be two of you.

    The discovery arrived this evening with such certainty that I nearly laughed. Not because it surprised me. Because it explained so much.

    For months I had been under the mistaken impression that I was speaking to only one man.

    Meanwhile, an entire second population appeared to be living inside him.

    One of them leaves fingerprints on the soul.

    The other continues through the day.

    One enters a room carrying enough electricity to alter the arrangement of furniture.

    The other returns home without a trace of ash.

    Both seem equally convinced of their authenticity.

    At 8:46 p.m.

    I placed my head out the window and watched darkness collect itself in the trees.

    The wind carrying the scent of rain that had fallen elsewhere, and I found myself wondering whether the two of you know each other.

    Whether one sends letters to the other.

    Whether they pass each other in narrow hallways.

    Whether one ever pauses at the sound of the other’s footsteps.

    I hope they do.

    I hope they sit together and exchange stories.

    Otherwise —

    I cannot imagine the loneliness.

    And for the first time it occurred to me that perhaps I had been mistaken.

    There are not two versions of you.

    There are simply two men sharing the same address.

    One arrives carrying fire.

    The other arrives Tuesday.

    And suddenly the mystery was no longer how they existed.

    The mystery was how they survived each other.

    How they shared the same life.

    How one biography contained them both.

    I felt tired suddenly.

    Not for myself.

    For them.

    And then for you.

    Because I have spent my entire life being only one person.

    Which is exhausting enough.

    The wind moved through the trees.

    And I wondered if the man who stood in my house ever misses the other one.

    If, on certain evenings he catches sight of him crossing the distance.

    A familiar silhouette.

    A shadow carrying fire.

    Gone before he can call out.

    Perhaps that is why I have always felt a tenderness for birds.

    They leave.

    But they leave whole.

    The wing does not migrate separately from the sky.

    The song does not arrive three days after the bird.

    Nothing is divided.

    Nothing remains behind to haunt the trees.

    And there, with my head resting in the open night, I arrived at a thought so gentle it almost escaped me.

    Tonight I felt tired for you.

    Not because I finally understood you.

    Quite the opposite.

    Because I realized both men were real.

    And somehow, beneath the same name, behind the same eyes, inside the same life, they continue forward together.

    Otherwise—

    I cannot imagine the loneliness.

  • Redolence

    When I see birds
    I can almost smell them

    An odd thing to confess aloud

    They smell like a wound drizzled by morning rain
    like dust lifting softly from pavement after weather
    like roses still carrying the cold breath of dawn

    Not unpleasant

    Just painfully alive

    Ancient somehow

    As though feathers preserve memories
    the body spends years trying to outlive

    Strange how scent reaches the soul before thought does

    One breath
    and suddenly the past becomes physical again

    The ache gathering beneath the ribs
    the overwhelming feeling
    of having lost something beautiful long ago

    That invisible meeting place between longing and recognition

    The way certain scents return us
    not only to people
    but to former versions of ourselves

    Softer selves
    unguarded ones
    the selves that still believed tenderness
    could exist without disappearance attached to it

    And perhaps that is why birds unsettle me

    Because when they cross the evening sky
    carrying the fragrance of rain and distance and earth
    something inside me rises toward them instinctively

    Not joy exactly
    not sorrow either

    But the unbearable remembrance
    of who I was
    before longing became part of my nature

  • 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

  • Dignity lives here

    My dignity lives here

    In the first image
    where everything is still charcoal and restraint

    Where the bird is almost disappearing
    into all that white silence
    pulling something dark and endless
    from the center of itself
    as though love
    had entered the body quietly
    and forgotten how to leave

    That was the beginning

    The sacred stage of longing

    The stage where silence
    still felt noble

    Where I believed
    if I carried my ache beautifully enough
    it might become survivable

    So I answered softly
    Smiled softly
    Learned how to make a home
    out of fragments

    A lingering hand
    A familiar voice at dusk

    The unbearable tenderness
    of someone leaving slowly
    because part of them
    does not wish to go

    And I never asked
    the impossible question

    Stay . .

    Charcoal | Watercolor

    Then came the color

    The bruising

    Blue for all the sorrow
    I folded inward
    so no one would have to witness it

    Red for every part of me
    that continued loving
    even after understanding
    love alone
    cannot keep a person near

    And suddenly
    the longing was no longer contained

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    Charcoal | Watercolor 

    It spread through everything

    Through the wings
    Through the throat
    Through the hollow cathedral
    of the chest
    where attachment had already begun
    lighting its candles

    That is what these images are, I think

    The progression
    of a soul trying to preserve its dignity
    while quietly drowning in devotion

    At first
    the suffering is elegant

    Almost holy

    But grief is alive

    And living things
    eventually bleed through

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    Charcoal | Watercolor 

    So the bird darkens
    The colors deepen
    The silence grows teeth

    Until one day
    even dignity itself
    begins fighting for oxygen
    inside the attachment

    And still

    The bird continues singing

    That is the part
    that dismantles me

    Not that it is wounded

    But that it continues loving
    while wounded

    Continues turning its small trembling body
    toward warmth
    even after realizing
    the light is already leaving

    Some nights
    I want to tear myself free from it completely

    To become a bird myself

    To split open the evening
    with all the things
    human dignity will not let me say

    To fly blindly into the dark
    Rather than remain here
    composed
    while my soul floods quietly beneath me

    Because I cannot remember
    ever loving like this before

    Not with this much ache

    Not with this much silence

    Not with this terrible instinct
    to preserve grace
    while the heart is collapsing

    And perhaps
    that is the saddest thing
    about being human

    how we continue singing
    long after we understand
    no one is coming
    to save us
    from our own devotion

    Dignity fighting for oxygen
    charcoal | watercolor

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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