Dear Sister

Emma Trelles

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.

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about this poem

“I’ve been trying to collaborate on poems with Alex Lytton Regalado for years. So far, we haven’t finished even one, but we have written fresh poems on our own from those drafts, and ‘Dear Sister’ is one of them, addressed to her but also to myself and to any generous soul who reads it. All of our words belong somewhere, even if that place is simply an intention. This poem touches [on] what I’ve thought most about in this last decade of my writing life: my origin story, the natural world as a kind of oracle, womanhood, wonder, and demise.”
—Emma Trelles

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