Winter is ceaseless ~ streets ~ phantom trees caged in fog ~ light and its beautiful doom ~ The scent of leaves ~ green and dead ~ arrives through windows like a timid fantasma ~ There are tiny spiders in the eaves ~ the color of forgettable stones ~ I don’t have the heart ~ to kill them ~ Today ~ I found a squirrel ~ dreaming ~ the sleep of the young and unknowing ~ I pray for a world ~ scatter-starred with that kind ~ of tenderness ~ Nothing hears me ~ Let’s pretend ~ the clock is frozen ~ in its sturdy shroud ~ that our 3,000 weeks ~ are the start ~ We began ~ in the land of mangroves and abandonment ~ hibiscus and metal ~ egret and engine ~ predator sun ~ skin, so much skin ~ sky with its commandments ~ sky like no other ~ concrete rising ~ falling ~ altars and offerings ~ cigar smoke santos hope gold velas blood gallina rum ~ shells to guard the crossroads ~ the drilling eyes of reptiles and men ~ my people who I long for ~ my people who I hide from ~ My sister, I write these words ~ a lifetime away ~ at the foot of the mountains ~ another sea ~ vaster galaxy ~ primordial and without memories ~ House of my nightmares, gone ~ Graves unattended ~ You ask me why I left ~ I say I am a triple horse ~ forever running ~ to the next to the next to the next ~ Where will I end? ~ My baby cronedom has arrived ~ The track now points to my bones ~ in flecks or stashed beneath ~ the thorned trunk of a ceiba ~ I know just the one.
Copyright © 2025 by Emma Trelles. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 13, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
