translated by Tiffany Troy 

I don’t know if it was disappointment 
or contempt  
in your eyes accustomed to seeking novelty and beauty 
in inanimate objects 

I only stacked books 
on simple furniture 
and clothes 
always in the open. 

How can you live in a boat cabin 
-you used to say- 
without yearning 
for a ticket home 
or having any concept of firm land? 

Until one day you told me: 
You can’t be a part of the world 
if you’re always stepping out 
to observe it. 

Ana Carolina Quiñonez Salpietro is a Peruvian poet born in Lima-Peru in 1988. She holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Film and Audiovisual Studies from Pompeu Fabra University (Spain), where she graduated with a thesis titled “Una hija pródiga: Mary Jiménez, documentales e intimidad.” She has worked as a journal editor for Cosas y Caretas and collaborated with Un vice absurdo, La Ventana Indiscreta and Ojo Dorado. Her poetry collections include Cuentos tristes que esperan las chicas antes de salir a bailar (Estruendomudo, Lima, 2010) Vacaciones de invierno (Vox, Buenos Aires, 2012)  and Matacaballos (Paracaídas, Lima, 2018). She lives in Barcelona and her forthcoming collection of poems is Te encantaría aquí, es precioso  

Tiffany Troy is the co-translator of Santiago Acosta’s The Coming Desert/El próximo desierto (forthcoming, Alliteration Publishing House), in collaboration with Acosta and the 4W International Women Collective Translation Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poetry in translation has appeared or is forthcoming in literary journals like Guernica, Latin American Literature Today, Poetry Northwest, and World Literature Today as well as the anthologies Constellations: New Voices in Translation (Sundial House, Columbia University Press), and The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II (Trinity University Press).