Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “-write this down!” by Lovisa Goodwill, second place winner of the 2025 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for Canadian Youth, junior category.

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-write this down!

By Lovisa Goodwill

I wrote this down somewhere—

I swear I did.

Maybe in the notes app, between grocery lists

and my half-finished dream journal entries,

or on the back of a napkin I used to wipe off my lip gloss.

Or maybe I never wrote it at all.

It was about memory.

Or loss.

Or how they’re usually the same thing.

I was walking home when I thought of it,

under streetlights that kept flickering out

like they were embarrassed to be seen with me.

It was cold. —I never wear a good enough coat—

My hands were in my pockets.

I remember thinking:

Write this down before you forget.

And for a while, I did remember.

The first line.

Then the second.

Then the way it all fit together so perfectly,

like a mosaic.

But then—

I don’t know when exactly, but does it matter?

—The first line disappeared.

Then the second.

Then the whole damn thing.

Like it got bored of itself and left.

Somewhere, someone’s erasing my name.

Somewhere, someone’s forgetting my face.

I meant to say something about that—

about how it happens so slowly

you don’t even notice,

until one day someone calls you by the wrong name,

and you don’t correct them.

I had a whole metaphor for it.

Something about a sandcastle at high tide,

or a Polaroid left too long in the sun.

But I can’t remember

I’ll forget this one soon enough as well.

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Copyright © Lovisa Goodwill

Second place winner of the 2025 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for Canadian Youth, junior category.

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