“On Friday after Three Years’ Silence” by Margo LaPierre

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “On Friday after Three Years’ Silence” by Margo LaPierre.


On Friday after Three Years’ Silence

By Margo LaPierre

A woolly book enters the room—I am

returning a borrow, a rare visit while in town.

It’s two p.m. and there are files rotting

on the stacks with shattered orbs: your reading glasses.

Mosquitoes scallop the walls. You claim

your eyesight has returned like magic

though never notice my knuckles

red from knocking. Your hearing’s still bad.

I remind you of our conversation a decade ago

when we were strident, unambivalent, then pry

a tome from its place in a puff of vinegar,

soil, and marzipan, the decadent bouquet

of paper and glue companioned like

two lifelong lovers, friends. Just barely.


Copyright © Margo LaPierre

Margo LaPierre is a freelance literary editor and writer. Her second poetry collection, Ajar, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in Fall 2025. She serves on Arc Poetry magazine’s editorial and executive boards and is a member of the Ottawa-based poetry collective VII. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and a publishing certificate from TMU. You can find her work in the Ex-Puritan, CV2, Room, filling Station, CAROUSEL, PRISM, and elsewhere.


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