Stephanie Papa
ALL THIS

I am on my knees.

Fur collects
In the room with the damp dog bed
Peco the black cat
Figure eights around me
Ants crawl in the wooden kitchen below
The smell of pesto and pine
I am a long way up
He planted the cherry tree in my garden
Intensifying this place
To again and again begin

He built this house of light.

---

Stephanie Papa is a writer and teacher living in Paris, France. She is originally from Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in the Prose Poetry Project and 5×5 magazine, Rumpus, and Cerise Press. She is a Poetry Editor for Her Royal Majesty magazine. She also organizes the Writers on Writing program, a series of readings with international writers in Paris.

Image credit: Sonja Guina on Unsplash

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #3.