You arrive here not as a beginning—but as something rewritten by its own hands.
Your children have stepped out of your body into their own weather, calling you less, needing you in quieter ways—like a photograph still warm from the sun.
Your parents soften into time, their voices folding, their strength becoming memory while they are still standing.
And you—you are no longer who you were when everything required you.
Now, you require yourself. You move differently—with a kind of knowing that drips slowly from the center of your chest.
This is not loss.
This is space.
A clearing where your name sounds new again.
Your hands—once full of everyone—begin to open, and in that opening something wild and unrestrained begins to breathe.
You are not starting over.
You are rearranging—like light when it realizes it no longer has to prove its brightness.
I have begun to release what was never entrusted to me—not you, not entirely—but the silent labor of sustaining what you leave unfinished.
There is a distinction now—subtle, but irrevocable.
It did not arrive through resolve, but through depletion—through that slow recognition.
That devotion without reciprocity becomes erosion. I no longer extend myself toward you with the same unguarded impulse.
Not because the feeling has diminished—but because it has clarified.
You remain consistent in your inconsistencies—present in fragments, attentive in intervals, returning just enough to ensure nothing dissolves.
And I—I have ceased to assemble meaning from what is partial.
There is a composure in me now that was not there before—not detachment, not absence—but a contained awareness that does not pursue what does not arrive whole.
I have come to understand that what holds substance does not require persuasion, does not depend on endurance, does not ask to be maintained by one.
So I withdraw my effort from what was never equally carried.
Not in resistance, not in finality—but in preservation.
You remain within that familiar distance—accessible, yet never fully offered.
And I remain—but altered. No longer oriented toward you, but returned to my own center of gravity.
There is a stillness here that does not ache—a quiet reordering of where I place my energy, of what I permit to remain unfinished within me.
And in this—without declaration, without urgency—I arrive at a certainty I do not need to speak aloud: what does not meet me in its fullness will no longer hold me in its absence.
Because I have stood in the quiet of this long enough to understand the difference between what is shared and what is endured alone.
And I have endured enough. Not loudly, not visibly—but in the private chambers of a feeling that was never returned with equal weight.
And still—I do not regret you. Not the moments, not the knowing, not even the cost. But I can no longer remain where I am not fully received.
And so—without resistance, without bitterness, without the need to be understood—I release what never chose me in the way I chose it.
And in the quiet that follows, in the space you no longer occupy in the same way—there is something unexpectedly tender: the return of myself. And with that knowing—unforced, undeniable—I remain whole.
This is written from a place of quiet weariness. Where I see clearly and still do not leave, where something remains. Not because it is easy, but because it will not loosen its hold on me. There are moments when it gathers in my chest, so completely I could cry from exhaustion. Not because I do not understand. But because I understand, and remain.
••••••••
When you grow tired.
Understand that I have been standing for some time – within a quiet depletion.
A subtle undoing that gathers without spectacle without witness – without relief.
It accumulates – not from absence – but from the persistence of what remains – from the repeated deferral of what has already taken shape.
In everything – but admission – In moving alongside something undeniable – While denying its rightful form in preserving composure.
While something within me presses with increasing clarity – Against its containment- Against the careful discipline -We impose upon it.
I recognize it – In the measured duration of your nearness – In the deliberate incompleteness.
Leaving me suspended As though finality itself Were a boundary – We are unwilling to cross – As though definition- Would demand more than we are prepared to concede.
And yet – What exists does not diminish – It gathers – It consolidates itself – In the spaces you leave unoccupied – In the quiet disarray – Of my interior world – In the gradual yielding of the structures – I once believed sufficient.
There is no reprieve in this – No restoration. Only a sustained interior tension. Precise. Unarticulated. And yet entirely present.
That neither dissipates. Not resolves into something gentler. It is exacting in its continuity.
It endures without permission. Without confirmation. Without the courtesy of resolution.
And still – I remain within its influence. Not out of uncertainty.
For I – Perceive it with an exactness. That admits no illusion. But because there is within you – A force – I do not readily dismiss.
A quiet insistence – That continues to draw me inward. Despite the fatigue it leaves in its wake.
It is not softness. It is not yearning alone. It is something more exacting.
Something that persists. Even as I grow weary of its lack of conclusion.
Even as I begin to understand – the cost of its continuation. There are moments in which I consider departure – Not as escape – But as preservation.
And yet even in that consideration – I feel its return – Not as urgency.
But as inevitability. And so I persist. Not unaware. Not untouched. Not unaltered. But still unwilling – Or perhaps unable to withdraw from what continues to exist between us with a certainty that requires nothing.
That offers nothing. And yet remains – Unrelinquished – Unresolved – And entirely – Inescapable.
Mari Sánchez Cayuso 
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