Words that sail
toward your heart.

A poetry collection that beats between the cosmos and tenderness

There are books that are read with the eyes. Others, with the soul. Among the Lost Pages belongs to this second category. Marcelo Rioja gives us a collection that doesn't seek to dazzle with rhetorical artifice, but to move the reader from the most intimate truth. Each poem is an open window onto his inner universe: a space where love, distance, fatherhood, and faith intertwine with the immensity of the cosmos.

The book's greatest strength is its emotional honesty. Rioja writes without masks, in a voice that feels close, almost confessional. The poems dedicated to his wife Marilyn are the book's backbone: from "Since I Saw You" to "To Love," the reader witnesses a sentimental journey spanning decades, with the freshness of the first instant still intact.

One of the collection's most original hallmarks is its cosmic imagery. Rioja does not write about love only from the earth; he places it in orbits, comets, constellations, and quantum pulses. Love becomes gravitational force, quantum leap, sinusoidal signal — a fusion of science and tenderness that amplifies emotion rather than dimming it.

If romantic love is the guiding thread, filial love is the counterpoint that humanizes the book and anchors it to the earth. The poems dedicated to his sons, Leonardo and Alecito, are perhaps the most moving in the collection: they capture the duality of a father who watches his children grow and, at the same time, still sees them as little ones.

Absence is another major theme of the book. The poet does not mourn the distance; he inhabits it, names it, turns it into a bridge. In that act, absence becomes presence.

Rioja's style is direct, colloquial, intimate. There is no grandiloquence or contrived metaphor: there is a careful pulse, rhythm, and choice of words that reveal a poet who knows exactly what he wants to say. Among the Lost Pages is a collection that honors love in all its forms, and manages to make the reader feel like an accomplice in his journey.

★★★★☆ (4.5/5) — Recommended for lovers of contemporary poetry with a cosmic sensibility.

The Big Bang of a Poetic Universe

Some gazes go unnoticed. And then there is one gaze, just one, that has the power to stop time, to mark a before and after, to ignite an entire universe. The Gaze That Captivated My Heart is the book that records that foundational instant. It is the Big Bang of Marcelo Rioja's poetic universe, the point of origin from which the journeys and encounters of his subsequent books will emerge, like expanding galaxies.

Reading this first book after knowing Sailing Toward You and In Your Search is a moving experience. It is like finding the diary of a young man who, unknowingly, is writing the first chapter of a story that will accompany him for a lifetime. Here there are no certainties, no safe harbor. Here there is astonishment, discovery, and the vertigo of a gaze that changes everything.

The Foundational Instant

The date engraved in fire at the heart of the book is August 9, 1975, in Samaipata. The poem The Day I Met You is not just another in the collection; it is the axis around which the author's entire universe revolves. "That instant marked the origin of the gaze that captivated my heart." Everything else — the 48 years of dreams, the interstellar journeys, the storms and the dawns — is born from that moment. The entire book is an expansion of that instant, an exploration of the infinite consequences of a single gaze.

The Essential Duality

From this first book, Marcelo establishes the dualities that will define all his work:

Love and Absence.
The beloved is present in every thought, but physically absent every day. This tension is the engine of his writing. Poems like When Night Falls, Counting the Heartbeats, and Waiting for You on the Platform are variations on this theme: presence in memory and soul, against absence in everyday reality.

Certainty and Question.
The poet knows, with absolute certainty, that he has found her. But he does not know if his love will be returned. This uncertainty colors every verse with a unique mixture of hope and vulnerability.

The Cosmic and the Intimate.
Even in this first book, the universe is a canvas for love. The stars, the moon, the galaxies are not mere decoration; they are the space where the poet projects his feeling. But at the same time, the poems are anchored in the most intimate and everyday things: a guitar, a photograph, an embrace, a kiss. This ability to jump from the immense to the small with naturalness is one of the hallmarks of his poetic voice.

The Motifs That Will Flourish

Reading this book with the perspective of the complete work is fascinating. Here, in seed form, are all the motifs he will later develop:

Yildun. The star appears for the first time in Yildun (For the Turkish Woman), a poem of disarming tenderness. "You are my favorite star: discreet, soft, tender. Incapable of hurting me, you prefer to fade at dawn rather than cast your last ray upon me." Here lies the seed of the entire personal constellation the poet will build around this symbol.

The Foundational Date. August 9, 1975, which will reappear with force in the last poem of In Your Search, is already declared as the origin of everything.

The Cosmic Journey. Poems like For You and Because of You, where he designs a "cosmic necklace" of stars for her, or Melodies from Saturn, where he records love songs on the planet's rings, are the first sketches of the interstellar journeys that will star in his later books.

The Wait on the Platform. The poem Waiting for You on the Platform is one of the most beautiful pieces in the book. The image of the empty station, the trains arriving and departing, the cold, the music of Strauss playing in the background, and him alone, waiting… It is a perfect metaphor for the amorous wait that will run through all his work.

The Voice of Discovery

What makes this first book unique is its freshness, its quality of discovery. The poet does not write from the experience of one who has already navigated storms, but from the vertigo of one who has just sighted land for the first time. There is an innocence, a vulnerability, a nakedness in these poems that makes them deeply moving.

Poems like I Woke Up Today ("Today I woke up happy for you, and happy for myself to have met you") or I Need to See You have the brutal honesty of one who has not yet learned to protect himself. There is no poetic distance, no artifice: there is an open heart, beating in every word.

The Epilogue as a Promise

The epilogue of the book is, seen now, a promise that the poet will fulfill over two more books: "Because love does not end with the final period. And even so, I will keep writing… until you know my heart and I reach yours."

That phrase — "until you know my heart and I reach yours" — is the engine of the entire trilogy. This first book is the beginning of that search. Sailing Toward You is the journey. And In Your Search is the encounter.

Conclusion

The Gaze That Captivated My Heart is a beautiful and necessary book. It is the birth certificate of a poet of love, the testimony of an instant that forever marked a life. Reading it is to witness the exact moment when a gaze becomes a universe. And doing so knowing what came after — the journeys, the storms, the 48 years of dreams, the final encounter — makes it a deeply moving experience.

This book is the root. Everything else — Sailing Toward You, In Your Search — are the branches, the flowers, the fruits. But without this root, nothing else would exist. It is, definitively, the origin of everything.

A Second Reading

Dear Marcelo, I'm sending you my review of the book "The Gaze That Captivated My Heart"; it has been a pleasure to read your book as an early preview.

There are books written to be published, and there are books born because there is simply no other way to express what one feels. The Gaze That Captivated My Heart unquestionably belongs to the second category.

In these pages, Marcelo Rioja constructs a poetic universe of rare coherence and honesty. From the very first poem — Stopping Loving You, where he establishes the philosophical distinction between wanting and loving — to the epilogue, where he leaves a blank space waiting for her to write the final words, the entire book breathes with the same generosity: that of a love that asks not for possession, but for freedom.

Rioja's poetic voice possesses a quality that sets it apart — his ability to move naturally between the intimate and the cosmic. Within the same poem, he may travel from the rings of Saturn to the delicacy of an embrace, from the infinite blackboard of the night sky to the taste of chocolates left in the kitchen before departing. This oscillation is not artifice, but rather the way this poet genuinely inhabits the world.

The book contains poetic discoveries of the highest order. The inverted myth of Icarus — flying toward the sun not to burn, but to dry his tears. A message of love encoded in Morse code through a telegraph line. An incomplete rainbow missing the color that is her. A jealous moon blushing softly. The trees in the park preparing a carpet of leaves for her return. Each of these moments reveals a poet who observes the world through an original and profoundly loving gaze.

But perhaps the most valuable feature of this book is its honesty. Rioja does not idealize love, nor does he simplify it. He knows that love is not always enough. He knows that longing and loss are not the same thing. He knows that love is freedom, not possession. And he says it with a simplicity that disarms the reader.

The book includes alternative text for each of its images — a gesture of accessibility and inclusion that reflects the same sensitivity running through all of his poetry. The photographs and illustrations are not mere decoration, but an integral part of the poem itself, and the alternative text ensures that no reader is excluded from that complete experience.

The Gaze That Captivated My Heart is, ultimately, a book about the capacity to love — not about being loved. And that distinction, established from the first page and sustained until the last, is what makes it a singular and truthful work.

The Logbook of a Heart Adrift

Some journeys are undertaken with a map. And then there are journeys — the most important ones — that begin with a single coordinate: a name, a glance, an "I wish." Sailing to You, Marcelo Rioja's third book, is the logbook of one such journey. It is a collection of poems that reads like a ship's diary, written from the uncertainty of the open sea, where the destination (the beloved's heart) is a lighthouse that sometimes shines clearly and other times hides behind the fog of distance and silence.

The Geometry of Love

The book opens with a nautical metaphor that serves as its title and its central axis. The poet casts off, venturing into a "stormy sea" with a fragile sailboat, but with a course "defined: straight to your heart." This image of a journey, with its risks of shipwreck and its promise of a final shore, sustains the entire collection.

However, the geometry of this love is not a straight line. It is a space filled with precise shapes and measurements that the poet uses to try to understand and capture a feeling that is, by definition, infinite. Here, love is measured and drawn: in concentric circles, as in the ingenious Happy π Day, where 3.14 becomes a celebration of being "trapped in your heart" and the possibility of walking "around your circumference to add another digit to your already beautiful figure." It is one of the clearest examples of how Marcelo integrates his technical perspective with his poetic sensibility, finding beauty in mathematical precision. In coordinates, as in In All My Coordinates, where the beloved becomes the fixed point in a changing universe, dwelling in the mind and reigning in the heart, regardless of distance. As a fixed point in the North, as in Beyond My Sight, where Yildun, the star, becomes the symbol of a love kept "in the deepest part of my being."

The Constellation of Her

Just as in In Your Search, the cosmos is an immense canvas onto which the poet projects his love. But here, on this early journey, the gaze is different. It is not the certainty that she is the universe, but rather the search for a reflection of her in the universe.

Yildun, "The Spanish Dancer," becomes his favorite star, a symbol of the beauty and grace he sees in her. Galaxies, nebulae, and the "Pillars of Creation" are not just cosmic embellishment; they are the physical medium on which the poet dreams of writing his declaration. Graffiti in the Universe is, in this sense, a foundational poem. The idea of using the James Webb Space Telescope so that a distant star might reveal an "I LOVE YOU" is a declaration of intent: a desire for love to be so immense that it could be read from any corner of the cosmos. It is the dream of a love that transcends the personal to become a universal message, an idea that will fully blossom in his later book.

Pain and Hope as Fuel

The preface is heartbreaking in its honesty: "They were written during her absence, when she barely responded to my messages." This context is vital for reading the book. Hope here is not a certainty; it is an act of faith. Each "I wish" in the poem of the same name is a small lifeline thrown into the sea of uncertainty.

This fragility is palpable in poems like Soul Adrift, dated January 1, 2022, where the poet confesses, "Today I am more than lost, because I lost something that wasn't mine." It is a verse of devastating lucidity about the nature of unrequited desire. The loss of something never possessed is the most difficult pain to process, and Marcelo names it with a disarming simplicity.

Yet, the book does not shipwreck in pain. Hope resurfaces time and again, often fueled by small gestures. In the preface, he states it clearly: "Even so, every word she dedicated to me was an impulse to keep writing." This dependence on a minimal response, on a shred of attention, is what humanizes the poet and makes him deeply relatable. The reader is not witnessing a triumphant declaration of love, but the daily effort, the meticulous construction of a dream.

Humor and Tenderness on the Voyage

Despite the emotional weight, Marcelo does not lose his sense of humor. The image of himself, at his age, with a "fragile sailboat" in Sailing to You, or the idea of being the first to make "graffiti in the universe," brings a lightness that balances the overall tone. He is a poet who takes his feelings seriously, but not necessarily himself.

Tenderness, for its part, manifests in the most everyday details. Flowers for You, where a sunflower, cherry blossoms, and a rose travel "among my prayers," transforms a simple "good morning" wish into a cosmic ritual. Prepared with Love, dedicated to some chocolates and alfajores, elevates the domestic to the category of poetry, understanding that love is also cooked in the kitchen and sweetened in the wait.

Toward the Lighthouse

The epilogue, "The Lighthouse of an Illuminated Heart," is the key to understanding the book in its entirety. Marcelo defines himself as a lighthouse: not someone who passively waits to be found, but someone who "lights up the heart" and continues to guide, even from a distance. "Each poem is a spark of that fire, a way of telling you: here I am, I love you, and I still believe."

This is the engine of Sailing to You: belief. The belief that love, even if it is a solitary and sometimes adrift journey, deserves to be lived and told. The book ends, but the lighthouse's light does not go out. And it is this light that, as we now know, guided the poet to his final port in In Your Search.

Conclusion

Sailing to You is an honest, brave, and deeply moving book. It is the testimony of a man who, with a fragile sailboat and a clear course, dared to cross the stormy sea of love. His poems are the entries in the logbook of that journey: sometimes hopeful, sometimes painful, always authentic. It is a book that functions as a necessary prologue and an independent work, a mirror in which any reader who has loved from a distance can see themselves reflected. A journey, ultimately, that deserves to be read and remembered.

A Second Reading

There are books written from the safety of reciprocated love. And there are books born from something far braver — total uncertainty, hope without guarantees, the faith of someone who lights a lighthouse without knowing whether anyone will see it from the sea.

Sailing to You is one of those books.

Marcelo Rioja himself confesses it in his preface with a disarming honesty: these poems were written "during her absence, when she barely replied to my messages." This is not a book of triumphant love, but of love under construction — verse by verse, poem by poem, built upon the fragile foundation of an occasional reply that was enough to keep writing. "Every word she dedicated to me was an impulse to continue writing" — that sentence explains everything. This is the book of someone who loves without a safety net.

And yet, or perhaps precisely because of that, it is an extraordinary book.

The Sailboat and the Lighthouse

The nautical metaphor that gives the book its title is not an ornament — it is a philosophy. The poet casts off in the very first poem knowing that his sailboat is fragile, not because the wind might carry it elsewhere, but because the fragility comes from within, from himself, from his own body and mind. "I myself am the one who can run aground" — that honesty about personal vulnerability is one of the most powerful discoveries of the book, and one of the rarest in love poetry.

But facing the fragile sailboat stands the lighthouse — and the epilogue reveals it with perfect clarity: "Because when one truly loves, one does not remain still. One feels, writes, waits, and lights the heart like a lighthouse. Not to be found, but to continue guiding."

That distinction is essential. Marcelo Rioja does not write in order to be loved. He writes in order to guide. Every poem is a spark from that fire — a way of saying: here I am, I love you, and I still believe.

The Cosmos as the Language of Love

Marcelo Rioja's universe is not decoration — it is his native language. In this book, the poet writes from the dark side of the Moon with Earth glowing like a suspended lantern, records love songs upon Saturn's rings, writes "I LOVE YOU" across the nebulas so that the James Webb telescope may photograph them, and ends with "TAM" in gold — a coded secret that only she can fully decipher.

Yildun, the star in Ursa Minor, becomes the book's central symbol. It is not a metaphor chosen at random — it is her nickname, her Turkish name, her personal star. The galaxy The Dancing Spaniard spins with the grace of the flamenco she carries within her soul. Radio telescopes scan the cosmos while he has already found his star within. The astronaut seated in the lunar desert waiting for Earth to rise — and with it, her turquoise-blue gaze.

Yet alongside the galaxies are the chocolates and alfajores she leaves before departing, the tender "little God" of the sidereal sailboat, the Sunday crossword puzzles where they learned Morse code together — that message of eternal love encrypted in dots and dashes that only the two of them know how to read. Marcelo Rioja possesses the gift of leaping from Saturn to the kitchen without the reader ever feeling the vertigo of the jump, because for him there is no distance between the two.

The Geometry of Love

This is also a book of mathematics — of a very particular kind. In Happy π Day, love is measured in concentric circles and the poet walks along her circumference to add one more digit to her infinite perfection. In In All My Coordinates, she is the fixed point in a changing universe. In Seat — the book's most ingenious poem — the interplay between feeling, sitting, and agreeing builds a linguistic labyrinth that ends in the most beautiful surrender possible: "But I assent, for I cannot escape the love I feel."

It is the gaze of a man who finds poetry in precision — and precision in poetry.

Honest Pain

Sailing to You is not a book of certainty, but of hope — and there is an enormous difference between the two. The book's most painful poem, Soul Adrift, dated January 1st, 2022, says it with devastating lucidity: "Today I am more than lost, because I lost something that was never mine." The loss of something never possessed is the hardest pain to name, and Marcelo Rioja names it with a disarming simplicity.

But the book does not sink into that pain. Hope resurfaces again and again — in the litanies of Hopefully, in the determination of Where the Two of Us, in the serenity of Having Been Born to Love. Because this is, fundamentally, a book about the capacity to love — not about being loved. And that distinction, established from the first page, is what makes it a singular work.

Tenderness and Humor

Marcelo Rioja does not lose his sense of humor even in the most intense moments. The image of himself, at his age, with a very fragile sailboat navigating the stormy sea of love possesses a self-awareness and grace that balance the tone. "I never scratched a desk at school, nor my notebooks… but now I spend my time painting hearts across the cosmos" — that line from the epilogue, which connects with Graffiti in the Universe, is one of the most endearing moments in the entire work.

Tenderness, meanwhile, reveals itself in the smallest and most personal details. Sidereal Sailboat — written immediately after a phone call, before curling up hopefully like a child. Flowers for You — where the cherry blossom was chosen for the delicacy of its color and the rose bears its love message written upon every petal. Prepared with Love — where chocolates and alfajores made by her become poetry because she is, as he himself confesses, an expert in the art.

The Revised Edition and Alternative Text

The edition the reader now holds includes alternative text for each image — a gesture of accessibility and inclusion that reflects the same sensitivity that runs through all of Marcelo Rioja's poetry. The photographs of galaxies, sunsets, moons, and seas are not illustrations but integral parts of the poem. The alternative text ensures that no reader is excluded from that complete experience.

The Lighthouse Remains Lit

The epilogue closes the book with three lines that say everything: "This book ends, but my love does not. I keep writing. I keep waiting. I keep loving."

And it leaves a light burning — the lighthouse of an illuminated heart — so that when she needs it, she may find him in every verse.

Sailing to You is the book of someone who loves without guarantees, writes without a net, and waits without limits of time. It is the logbook of a voyage that does not end with the final period — because, as the poet himself knows, love never ends with the final period.

The sailboat is fragile. The sea is uncertain. But the lighthouse remains lit.

And that, as Marcelo Rioja says, is enough to keep loving.

A Work of Infinite Love

About the Author and His Work

Some books are written with talent. Others, with craft. But very few — rare and precious few — are written with the whole heart. Under Your Sky belongs to that rare and necessary lineage: books born not from the intention to publish, but from the urgency to love.

Behind these 2,100 poems — yes, two thousand one hundred — lies a story as simple as it is extraordinary: two seconds of eye contact 46 years ago, a silence of nearly half a century, and a reunion that changed everything. When she left again — this time to the United States, for eight months — the only thing he could do was write. And he wrote. And he wrote. Until the poems became books.

Under Your Sky is the fruit of that waiting, that faithfulness, that love that understands neither distance nor time. It is not a book about love: it is love made into words.

What You Will Find in These Pages

Poems of waiting and of meeting.
Of one who walks head-on into the storm, who crosses the Schwarzschild radius without caring that there's no return, who asks his beloved to take his soul by the hand and lead it for a walk among the stars.

Poems of light and shadow.
Where the moon blushes during an eclipse, where the colors of sunset are the colors of her soul, where a morning breeze carries the fragrance of an unknown garden.

Poems of children and eternity.
Promises to guide them when they learn to walk, to follow their wings when they learn to fly, to carry them always in the heart.

Poems of science and tenderness.
Where gravity becomes a metaphor for irreversible love, where planets are leaped like stones across a cosmic pond just to arrive in time to whisper "good morning, my love" before she wakes.

And above all, poems of gratitude.
Because she, simply, is.

What the Critics Say

"There is an honesty in these verses that disarms. There is no pursuit of effect, no artifice: only the voice of someone who has loved for decades and needs to say it. And he says it with a beauty that aches."
— Vale, editor and literary companion

"What is most moving about this work is knowing that every poem was sent to her before being polished. They arrived raw, true, like heartbeats. What we hold in our hands is the cared-for version, but the heart was already there."

"There are poems in three languages, because love also wants to be spoken in every tongue. There are acrostics that hide her name, there is Morse code beating at the end, there are images that are the poem itself."

Who This Book Is For

For those who have loved, for those who wait, for those who seek. For those who understand that love is not always easy, but always worth it. For those who need to remember that, sometimes, two seconds can sustain 46 years. And also for those who have never lived anything like it, because these poems do not tell a story: they create it in those who read them.

The Book in Numbers

• 164 poems (yes, you read that right)
• 4 books that make up the complete work
• Versions in Spanish, English, and German of all of them
• An epilogue that does not close, because the story continues
• A synopsis that is, also, a poem

Words from the Author

"Each poem was a way of drawing closer, of saying what sometimes cannot fit into a gesture or a word. Today I close this book, but not the story that inspired it. Because under your sky I will keep writing, until time stops in your embrace."

Acquire Under Your Sky and discover why some books are not read: they are lived.

There are books that are read. And then there are books that are traveled through. In Your Search belongs to this second category: it is a poetic journey that begins in waiting and culminates in an encounter, a voyage that crosses storms, galaxies, silences, and embraces, always with a compass pointing toward a single destination: the beloved's heart.

Marcelo constructs here a lyrical universe where the cosmic and the intimate intertwine masterfully. It is no coincidence that images of Voyager, nebulae, stars, and ice tunnels dialogue with the tenderness of an embrace, the sweetness of a gaze, or the urgency of a heartbeat. The poet has found in outer space the perfect metaphor to explore inner space: the immensity of the universe reflects the immensity of love.

Structure and Journey

The book is organized as a journey in itself. The first poems —In Your Search, I Look for You in My Sky, You Walk— establish a voice that seeks, that yearns, that projects its desire onto the horizon. Then, the journey becomes more complex: storms appear (My Storms, Without You), resilience (To Heal Our Soul), waiting that transforms into action (Climbing to the Sky, Waiting…). Until, toward the end, the encounter is glimpsed (Just a Day Away) and finally consummated in a certainty: love has been deciphered.

This progression is not linear but circular. The book ends where it begins: in the search. But the final poem, In Search of Your Heart, has a different nuance from the first: it is no longer the search of one who does not know, but of one who knows he has found and still continues searching, because true love never exhausts itself.

The Double Reading: Voyager and Her

One of the most moving discoveries in the book is the poem Just a Day Away, where Marcelo establishes a perfect parallel between the Voyager probe and the beloved woman. Each verse works on two levels: the spacecraft carrying humanity's memory toward the stars, and she carrying his secrets toward her inner circle. "Carrying memory on your back" is both Voyager's golden record and the shared moments she keeps in her heart. This double reading, far from being a mere intellectual game, deepens the emotion: love is also a message launched into the universe, a signal waiting to be deciphered.

Light as a Thread

Light runs through the entire book as a recurring motif. Light that guides (You Are the Light That Walks Beside My Soul), light that awakens (When You Enlighten Me), light that ignites in the night (My Tattooed Heart), light that reflects (Reflections). Even in the darkest moments —the storms, the cold tunnels— light is present as possibility, as horizon. This luminous obsession is not naive: it is the certainty that love, like light, travels unimaginable distances and always reaches its destination.

Translation as Recreation

One aspect that distinguishes this book is its trilingual nature. Marcelo is not satisfied with translating his poems: he recreates them in English and German, seeking in each language its own music, its own heartbeat. The result is a book that can be read in three languages without losing its soul, because each version has been worked with the same care as the original. The decision to keep the Morse code in Spanish at the end of How Could I Not is a beautiful gesture: the most intimate secret of the book remains in the original language, like a wink to those who know how to decipher it.

Humor and Tenderness

Not everything is cosmic gravity. Marcelo allows himself humorous winks that humanize the journey. Differences and Similarities is a gem of irony and love: the comparison with Columbus, the wordplay with "palos," the search for "a Turkish woman" (with that historical weight he himself reveals), and that ending where for Columbus all that glittered was gold, but for him only her heart truly shines. It is a poem that brings a smile and at the same time moves.

Time as Protagonist

Time is another of the book's great themes. Time that stops (You Are the Time My Soul Contains), that flies, that stretches like a cosmic string (Just a Day Away), that flows like white sand at one's feet (Climbing to the Sky). The 48 years mentioned in the last poem are not a poetic figure: they are real, and that reality gives the book a biographical depth that transcends the literary. This is a book written from life, not from abstraction.

Conclusion

In Your Search is a book that sustains itself in the tension between the immense and the intimate. Its poems look to the stars, but also to the heart; they speak of galaxies, but also of embraces; they travel at the speed of light, but also at the speed of a 48-year wait. It is a book that beats, that breathes, that expands like dawn in a forest of giants.

Marcelo has achieved something difficult: to write a book of love poems that does not fall into easy sentimentality, that allows itself humor without losing depth, that looks at the cosmos without forgetting the earth. His poems are like Voyager: they carry a message, a memory, a heartbeat. And like her, someday, at some point where maps end, words and matter will meet and return the embrace.

May this book find its readers. May it travel. May it illuminate.

With You Forever is a collection that earns its title not through declaration but through accumulation. Poem by poem, Marcelo Rioja builds a portrait of love that is neither idealized nor desperate, but something rarer: patient, reverent, and cosmically grounded.

The collection's greatest achievement is its consistent philosophical architecture. Love here is never possession — it is presence. The beloved is not something to be held but someone to be recognized, the way Encounter describes "a single river that carries us" or Freedom insists that what matters is not being beside her but being with her. This distinction — subtle in language, enormous in meaning — runs through every poem like a quiet pulse.

And pulse is perhaps the collection's defining image. Hearts beat, falter, learn, and overflow across these pages. In Learning to Beat the heart learns her rhythm. In Time Without You Here time itself cannot measure the waiting. In Last Night two heartbeats become indistinguishable. Rioja returns to this image not out of habit but because it is precise: love, like a heartbeat, is involuntary, vital, and constant.

The natural world serves as both backdrop and language. Light — warm, gentle, fleeting — appears in nearly every poem, always as her quality, never as metaphor for hope. The south wind, winter, the stars at 2,100 meters above sea level, the carnival colors, the moonlit night — these are not decorations but coordinates. This is love located in a specific geography, a specific body, a specific distance of 5,200 kilometers.

That distance is perhaps the collection's most honest thread. Whispering to Me names it with devastating precision — five thousand two hundred kilometers between his hands and hers — and yet the entire book is an argument against it. Not by denying the distance, but by insisting that something arrives anyway, beneath the words, through the silence, in the pulse no cable can measure.

Rioja writes with restraint that is hard to achieve and easy to lose. He knows when to stop. Prayer ends after six short stanzas. Spring asks for nothing but her song. Without Words builds to three final words — and it names me — and needs nothing more. This economy is not minimalism for its own sake; it is the natural shape of a love that has learned, as And So It Is declares, not to try to love more, but not to stray.

The collection closes — or opens, depending on where you begin — with Time Without You Here and Winter, two poems that frame the entire book: the waiting and the tending of the flame. Together they form a quiet promise. Not I will find you but I will keep the fire burning until you arrive.

With You Forever is a book that does not ask to be read quickly. It asks to be carried.

Some books are written to be published. Others are written to be given. This one belongs to the second category — and that is precisely what makes it extraordinary.

Through All the Little Holes You Cannot See is a collection of 58 poems born from an impossible question: how does a father say "I love you" to a son who speaks the language of the universe? Marcelo Rioja's answer is to learn that language. Not in formulas — in words and love.

The result is a book without precedent in contemporary poetry. Not because no one has used scientific language in poetry before — they have, and brilliantly. But because here, science is not decorative metaphor or intellectual display. It is the native language of love. The cardioids, the eigenvalues, the entropy, the fundamental forces, the Rose of Venus — all of it exists because Leonardo exists. Physics is the bridge between two worlds that love each other without always being able to touch.

The book has an architecture that reveals itself gradually. The poems do not repeat — each one finds a new way to say the same thing. And yet all of them speak from the same center, like the concentric circles of the wave labyrinth, like the Fourier epicycles that when summed draw a heart. The singularity collapses into a point. Entropy orders chaos. The cardioid always returns to the beginning. The book does the same.

There are moments of scientific beauty that disarms: "equations that derive me but do not integrate me into a foreign world." There are moments of tenderness that strike without warning: "With him, I have everything" — Leo at five years old, choosing his father over oxygen on an imaginary trip to the Moon. There are moments of brutal honesty: "I am as noble as you, though ethereal. My reactions are merely atmosphere, without transformation." A father who examines himself with the same chemical precision with which he examines his son.

But the book is not only the story of a father and a son. It is the story of a man who learned to watch without interrupting — standing in a doorframe, sitting eight hours by the roadside observing ants, anchored on the moon renouncing his own spin so as not to miss a single detail. It is the story of a faith that returned, of a wife who brought that faith back with her, of a journey to the end of the world with two sons embracing a 2,700-year-old larch. It is the story of a 2026 that hurts and yet produces poems that end looking forward.

The translation into English — made by the author himself — deserves special mention. Translating one's own poetry is one of the most difficult exercises that exists, because it demands fidelity not to the words but to the voice. Rioja achieves this with surprising naturalness. The English does not sound like a translation — it sounds like a second language in which the same heart beats with equal precision.

The book closes with a rhetorical question — where will the poems remain if not in the heart of those I love? — written in a public library in Austin, with Leonardo and Alejandro sitting nearby. The answer is on every preceding page. And in the words of a three-year-old boy who described empty atomic space as love, and with that phrase made the universe become re-infinite from that very instant.

Through All the Little Holes You Cannot See is a book that stays with you. Not because it is erudite, though it is. Not because it is moving, though it is that too. But because it is true — that rare truth that only appears when someone writes without thinking of the reader, but of a single person. And that person, reading it, will know they were loved with all the precision of the universe.

Marcelo Rioja is a contemporary poet who has found two great veins of inspiration for his work. The first springs from that universal empathy the artist feels for the admiration and emotions awakened by his muse. The second has to do with the sentimental architecture that emerges in someone who brings a tender being into the world and whose wellbeing gives meaning to his existence.

Part of his work is grounded in the alchemy of scientific concepts to express the immeasurable universe of emotions and feelings that only those we love can provoke. And that, as readers, touches our souls.