In this luminous debut collection, Robert Antidormi maps the inner topography of the heart, its chambers of longing, devotion, memory, and rebirth. In the Place of Absence gathers free verse, haiku and prose poems into a meditation on what it means to love deeply in a world shaped by impermanence.

Guided by the pulse of the four chambers of the human heart, these poems move through the sacred rooms of desire and grief, the tenderness of connection, and the quiet devastations we carry unseen. Whether tracing the shadow of ancestral memory or the fragile beauty of a final embrace, Antidormi writes with an intimacy that feels both personal and universal. Here, readers are invited into a space where longing becomes its own form of devotion and where even loss makes room for light. This collection offers solace in the shared human rhythms of heartbreak, resilience, and renewal, and in the promise: “Within each shadow / a heart waits to be.”