April 2, 2026: Phase One, Dilruba Ahmed
For leaving the fridge open
last night, I forgive you.
For conjuring white curtains
instead of living your life.
For the seedlings that wilt, now,
in tiny pots, I forgive you.
For saying no first
but yes as an afterthought.
I forgive you for hideous visions
after childbirth, brought on by loss
of sleep. And when the baby woke
repeatedly, for your silent rebuke
in the dark, “What’s your beef?”
I forgive your letting vines
overtake the garden. For fearing
your own propensity to love.
For losing, again, your bag
en route from San Francisco;
for the equally heedless drive back
on the caffeine-fueled return.
I forgive you for leaving
windows open in rain
and soaking library books
again. For putting forth
only revisions of yourself,
with punctuation worked over,
instead of the disordered truth,
I forgive you. For singing mostly
when the shower drowns
your voice. For so admiring
the drummer you failed to hear
the drum. In forgotten tin cans,
may forgiveness gather. Pooling
in gutters. Gushing from pipes.
A great steady rain of olives
from branches, relieved
of cruelty and petty meanness.
With it, a flurry of wings, thirteen
gray pigeons. Ointment reserved
for healers and prophets. I forgive you.
I forgive you. For feeling awkward
and nervous without reason.
For bearing Keats’s empty vessel
with such calm you worried
you had, perhaps, no moral
center at all. For treating your mother
with contempt when she deserved
compassion. I forgive you. I forgive
you. I forgive you. For growing
a capacity for love that is great
but matched only, perhaps,
by your loneliness. For being unable
to forgive yourself first so you
could then forgive others and
at last find a way to become
the love that you want in this world.
Check out audio/transcript of poet Pádraig Ó Tuama reading and discussing today's poem.
Traverse the wilds of poems sent today in...
2025: This Spring, James A. Pearson
2024: from Understory, Craig Santos Perez
2023: The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Franny Choi
2022: For the Journalists Who Write About Ukraine, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
2021: For My Friends, in Reply to a Question, Safia Elhillo
2020: The Conditional, Ada Limón
2019: Dorothy Wordsworth, Jennifer Chang
2018: A Small Needful Fact, Ross Gay
2017: What We Need, David Budbill
2016: Husky Boys’ Dickies, Jill McDonough
2015: Why Some Girls Love Horses, Paisley Rekdal
2014: The Fox, Faith Shearin
2013: You Can’t Have It All, Barbara Ras
2012: Road Trip, Kurt Brown
2011: Onset, Kim Addonizio
2010: February, Margaret Atwood
2009: Domestic, Carl Phillips
2008: A Birthday, W.S. Merwin
2007: Words for Love, Ted Berrigan
2006: At the Trial of Hamlet, Chicago, 1994, Sherman Alexie
2005: The Waking, Theodore Roethke
