Pepe Baena Nieto, Cádiz

It’s not something I discuss in public, but
I’m in a relationship with my flat.

The neighbors badmouth us because we don’t care how we look,
we put out the trash whenever we want, and
we’re constantly collecting
things that are broken.

I know she needs a new coat of paint.
—Her roots are showing—
That sometimes she dons old-fashioned clothes,
that I could do things that would make her look better.
Yet together we reminisce
about certain visitors in silence,
and she shows me each
threshold where I stumbled.

In our intimacy, there’s always one airless room.

We guard the secret of that dirty corner,
we keep forgotten toys,
and there’s one drawer we’ll never, ever open.

She knows everything about me, my flat.
We play with silly things that
don’t belong elsewhere anymore.
Once in a while we pleasure each other.

Sometimes her love is harsh: over the years I’ve learned that
central heating would numb me to the dangers of
creature comforts.
Stubborn little thing! Are you implying that loving you
means I’ll never have a moment’s rest?

Like any other couple, we thrive together.
The elevator is so new it sometimes blinds me,
sometimes shutting as I enter, just so I don’t
forget those years of exertion.

I know she loves me, too:
that when I lose patience and choose to descend the stairs
an automatic door opens
to remind me gravity isn’t
always on our side.

She knows more about my body than anyone.
She, too, takes me in her arms when I’m lost,
I have whimpered each one of my fears at her breast.

For her, I gave everything I once had.
She married all my faults,
and I made her a home.

Yolanda Castaño
Yolanda Castaño is a Galician poet, essayist, editor and cultural curator. Winner of Spain’s 2023 National Poetry Award, she has published eight poetry books, among them Materia [Matter] (Xerais, 2022) and A Segunda Lingua [Second Tongue] (PEN Club Galicia, 2014). Her work, translated into nearly three dozen languages, has reached audiences across four continents. Castaño lives and directs a writers’ residency in A Coruña, Galicia.

Samantha Schnee
Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders. Her translation of The Goddesses of Water, a collection by Mexican poet Jeannette Clariond, was published by Shearsman Books in the UK (August 2021) and World Poetry Books (September 2022) in the US. Her translation of Carmen Boullosa’s penultimate novel, The Book of Anna, was published by Coffee House Press last year, and her translation of Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She is a trustee of English PEN, where she chaired the Writers in Translation committee from 2014–17, and she currently serves as secretary of the American Literary Translators Association. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, she lives in Houston, Texas.

Pepe Baena Nieto
Pepe Baena Nieto is a painter from Spain, celebrated for his landscapes and still lifes that honor the essence of Andalusian life. His work captures what Gustave Courbet called “living art,” translating the customs, ideas, and spirit of his time with honesty and restraint. Baena’s paintings reveal Cádiz in every brushstroke — light, vitality, and people rendered without idealization but with deep respect and joy. Whether depicting familiar faces or scenes from daily life, he approaches reality with purity and precision, expressing more with less. Through his art, Baena documents the world around him as he sees it: simple, sincere, and beautiful in its essence.