FORGIVE ME
Here’s a lovely little poem about forgiveness by Timothy Liu. It can be seen as a different take on the subject than the one assumed in William Carlos Williams’s famous “This Is Just to Say.” In Williams’s poem, the lovers are both absent; in Liu’s they are present. The former, a note; the latter speech. Forgive me.
The Lovers
BY TIMOTHY LIU
I was always afraid
of the next card
the psychic would turn
over for us—
Forgive me
for not knowing
how we were
every card in the deck.
Timothy Liu, "The Lovers" from Don’t Go Back to Sleep. Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Liu. Reprinted by permission of Saturnalia Books.
Source: Don't Go Back to Sleep (Saturnalia Books, 2014)