Andrés Cerpa

& Now

The form of myself, a labyrinth, might be all that is left of those years –

 When all that is broken is broken…

I lift away

 from the apartment,

into the half dream

 & saudade. Like owls in the hidden,

my love for those years

 emerges

as a symbol

 of death.

There is a library at the end of the orchard,

 a cave of soft diamonds,

where the books close their eyes

 in the trees.

Andrés Cerpa is the author of The Vault, longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award: Poetry, and Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy from Alice James Books. He was raised in Staten Island, NY.