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
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 your want
call it hunger
call it the refusal
to live
half a life
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
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 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
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
you don’t say it
but it rides shotgun anyway
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
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
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
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—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
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
(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.
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
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’
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
Unveil me
And call this moment truth
Or what you will
I have been so many things
A voice that softened itself
A silence that learned to endure
A hand that held
more than it was meant to carry
I have been a bird
Singing in red
A wound that would not close
I gathered myself inward
Folded light into smaller shapes
Asked what hurt
to become less visible
But it remained
Not louder just closer
So I stopped asking it
To disappear
I let it stand as it is
Unhidden
Unresolved
And still reaching
Learning
The careful art of keeping
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
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.
He tells me not to cross my legs
So I sit as one might sit
Watching
Not interfering too quickly
My legs
So used to folding like branches seeking each other
Now rest apart
Two quiet limbs learning distance
They say a narrowing
I imagine it as a path in the woods
Grown thin with seasons
A place where light enters more carefully
Where even the smallest step must be placed with intention
There is a restlessness in me
Not loud, but persistent
Like wind moving through tall grass just out of sight
My body remembers
what it once did without asking
It leans toward itself,
tries to close, to return to the comfort of its own shape
And I stop it, gently now
Not with force
Just a quiet redirection
In this small act I begin to notice more
The weight of my own presence
The way I occupy space
The subtle shifting
of balance and breath
And then something softer embraces me
Feels like dusk settling over a field
Like water finding its level
A knowing that I do not have to hold all of this by effort alone
I imagine being carried the way the earth carries root
The way the river carries stone
Not by removing them
But making room
for their passage
So I sit
In this small
Altered posture
As if my body itself
were a landscape
Asking me to walk it
There is a quiet, lodged in my spine
Not mercy, not rest
A held breath that has learned to last
They call it L5
They dress it in tidy syllables
Compression
Degeneration
Small, sterile consolations
For something that does not console
My body refuses neatness
It speaks in pressure
In the slow persuasion of weight
In the way a column leans and does not admit it
In the way it carries
long past asking
Some days it rises like a verdict
Not loud, never theatrical, only exact
YOU WILL MOVE
BUT DIFFERENTLY
And I do
I rise into it
Into the narrow corridor of standing
Into the careful arithmetic of steps
Measuring what remains against what is required
There are mornings
when my body feels older than light
As if time has settled in me unevenly
Heavier in the places no one sees
And still
there is no audience for this
No ceremony
for the quiet labor
of holding oneself together
Only this private endurance
This unremarked fidelity to movement
I have bent around it
Reshaped myself to accommodate the untied
Made room for the ache
as one makes room
for a difficult truth
And somewhere in that making, something fierce remained
Not untouched, but unwilling to disappear
The spine bends, but it does not relinquish me
It holds, not gently, not kindly, but with a severity that resembles grace
I have learned that faith is not brightness, not relief, not even hope as it is often spoken
FAITH, is this . .
The quiet decision to stand again inside a body that has already asked too much of itself
To move, when movement is no longer given, but taken
Step by deliberate step
To carry what has no language
And so
I proceed, revised, contained
Still bearing my own weight
Not because I am unbroken
But because
I did not leave when breaking began
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Unsure if it’s maturity
But when someone speaks to me
As if they know me
And make assumptions
About my character
My ears quit working
I go numb, blank
I have mastered it
They walk away
Because in that instant
Im just dead inside
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
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
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
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
I am adapting
Cowardly, but adapting
This is distinction
Between surviving
And existence
My mercy
A need to substitute
My mouth, for a dream
Different homes
Pincushions for doorknobs
Damnit I love you
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
Fight for insight
God’s copyright
In this interior of light
My signature becomes
A wrath that requires no reason
Forgot
How still
Your mind is
This is not
A compliment
It’s rhetoric,
It chokes
The good parts of me
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
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 . .
The furthest of reaches
Sex seal serpentines
These syllogisms
Transform me
Inside is outside
It is everywhere
And nowhere
Invented
Devoured
– Man
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
Love clamps itself
Leaving small gaps
With just enough spaces
Allowing you to taste
Your very own tongue
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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