“A poem for the sixteen-year-old reading in the dark” by Zehra Naqvi

May 7, 2025

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “A poem for the sixteen-year-old reading in the dark” by Zehra Naqvi, from The Knot of My Tongue (McClelland & Stewart, 2024), shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.

View the 2025 book award shortlists

A poem for the sixteen-year-old reading in the dark

By Zehra Naqvi

I want to make you laugh You standing there by the window next to the day’s dying light a book in hand hungry for a line something to pull something to set afloat Come, let us go for a walk. I fashion you shoes cover you in a wool coat here’s a scarf twirl you in a meadow and grab both your hands Listen, God is not something you have to fight for It is here. You have already arrived. It is yours You don’t have to beg. You don’t have to lie in bed waiting You can look away from the wall Watch how the river melts and roars down a mountain Watch how it sighs into the sea Look at the lines on your palms A map. The destination: always here You are not shameful. You are not alone, but you are, but that is okay, I promise There are dead leaves from last fall still clinging to the tree that now unfurls with new leaves There are wild salmon thrashing up a mountain stream a whale and her calf in the cold northern seas There is you by the window with a poem in your hand an ache you cannot name Listen, I want to tell you it’s true, nothing remains the same, no skin cell, no same butterfly wing, no eggshells with the same spots even the ancient are always dying even the moon shifts in her sleep When you put down the book, it will be another room another light and you too will stir and the words will come to you

Copyright © Zehra Naqvi

From The Knot of My Tongue (McClelland & Stewart, 2024), shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.

Zehra Naqvi is the author of The Knot of My Tongue (McClelland & Stewart) and a recipient of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry awarded by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The New Quarterly, The Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2, PRISM international and elsewhere. Her work has been commissioned by Amnesty International and UNHCR, and has been featured on CBC Radio and in the Toronto Star. Zehra received a residency from Queen’s University and has guest lectured at the University of Victoria and Stanford University. She holds Master’s degrees in Migration Studies and Social Anthropology from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She has a Bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from UBC. Zehra was born in Karachi, Pakistan and grew up on Coast Salish territories (outside Vancouver).

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