“forgive me, this is not a love poem” by Lilah Warren
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “forgive me, this is not a love poem” by Lilah Warren, part of the 2025 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection and first place winner of the 2024 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize, senior category.
forgive me, this is not a love poem
By Lilah Warren
The only beautiful thing. Your smile. Rebellion of a hairbrush left on the duvet. May God send me here when I die; your eyes. Futility of the dawn, futility of the teeth, a morning, ended, a tooth, decomposed. In another life I eat ginger candy and play the cello. In this life I see strangers kissing in their kitchen through the window.
The only beautiful thing. There is only one. The heart is a triangle, trigonometry, painfully scraping against angles. The mind is a muscle– you can peel layers away, there’s nothing at the center. Slightly to the left there is a cup of cold tea. A sage-green dress if you’re particular.
Beautiful one, I have no time to unpack you. I am grabbing fistfuls of time in my hands like sand; like water. I am a crow and the world is a grain of sand. I am a crow and you are a seed-pearl necklace. Do you remember when I believed in a garden? No, I never told you. Forgive me. Morning, ended. Not without my silent riot.
Oh, beautiful. The ink, so dark I want to taste it. Skull, a koi pond. Push me too far, they spill out onto the ground, splutter for air, die. Futility of domestication. You cannot keep a girl in a cage. Keep her in a cool, damp pool at the bottom of a cavern, a tidepool, brimming with ivy to cradle her.
There is only one beautiful thing. Oh, forgive me, love, it isn’t you.
Copyright © Lilah Warren
Lilah Warren is a grade 11 student. Lilah’s poem “forvige me, this is not a love poem” won first place in the senior category of the 2024 Jessamy Stusrberg Poetry Prize.
Subscribe to Poetry Pause, or support Poetry Pause with a donation today!