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)