What Remains / Remains What

The Book

What Remains / Remains What is a collection of twenty-seven bidirectional poems — works that transform completely when read from bottom to top. A poem about despair becomes one about hope. A meditation on betrayal reverses into gratitude. An elegy for a closed factory rebuilds a community. The words never change. Only the direction does. Only you do.

Each poem was composed as a single act of attention, descending line by line into its subject, then tested by the return journey. Many did not survive. What remains are the poems that proved themselves true in both directions — not because the words changed, but because the reader does.

What's Inside

Five thematic movements guide the collection:

I — Love and Its Reversals

Separation becomes return, betrayal becomes gratitude, forgiveness given becomes forgiveness refused.

II — Self and Shadow

Self-rejection meets self-acceptance, inner critics become inner champions, hidden rooms become places of emergence.

Interludes

The form laughs at itself. Self-help books, therapy sessions, and meditation apps get the bidirectional treatment.

III — Time's Arrow

Letters to a younger self, photograph albums, funerals, seeds planted in uncertain ground.

IV — The World and Its Weight

The news cycle, borders, homelessness, factory closures, and the things we choose not to see.

V — Endings and Beginnings

Last chapters, closed doors, legacies questioned, and what remains when everything else is gone.

How It Works

Read each poem downward first. Then read it upward — same words, same lines, reversed order. Notice what shifts. That shift — whether toward light, toward darker recognition, or toward wry self-awareness — is the poem's real subject.

These poems are not rewritten in reverse.
They are reversed.

Sample — The Epigraph

Online Reader Edition (Immediate Access)

Read Online + Embedded Theme Song

Get immediate online access behind Stripe paywall. This edition is read-only (no local download) and includes the embedded soundtrack: "The Voice Inside" by Neural Syntax.

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About the Author

Luigi Pascal Rondanini has spent three decades moving between worlds that rarely speak to each other. From trading floors in London, Milan, and Riyadh to consulting rooms across five continents, his work has traced the architecture of risk, identity, and transformation.

Now based in London, he develops books and multimedia projects through Rondanini Publishing Ltd, treating writers as architects of living ecosystems rather than suppliers of content.

He writes about financial instruments — and about what remains when the instruments fall silent.

He lives in London with his wife and young child, who is learning that some stories change direction when you read them twice.

Pre-Order

Available for pre-order now. The book will be available worldwide through all major retailers, bookshops, and libraries.

Paperback: Coming soon
eBook: Pre-order eBook

Signed and non-signed versions will be available directly from Rondanini.com.

Press & Review Copies

For review copies, press enquiries, or interview requests, contact: Info@rondanini.com

Press Release: Download Press Release (PDF)

From the Back Cover

What remains after love changes?
What remains when memory refuses to fade?
What remains when we turn the story around?

A farewell becomes a beginning.
Forgiveness becomes doubt.
Loss becomes recognition.

Tender, precise, and quietly powerful, this is a book to read slowly — and then read again.

Because sometimes nothing changes
except the way we see it.