I read once, I can’t remember where, that it is blasphemy to isolate a single line in a poem because to do so is to destroy the whole of the poem as intended by the poet.

But, there isn’t a way to preview a poem. Before you read a novel, you at least see the cover, you might read the blurb, someone might recommend it to you and tell you roughly what the plot is. A poem doesn’t have a plot. While short, a poem can’t really be skimmed. So how would anyone know if they’re going to like a poem until they actually read it? We can’t make the leap of trust without a way in first.

So I isolate lines. Like good movie trailers, you’re not supposed to give it all away. It’s not supposed to be “the entirety”. And I don’t know, although Drake’s recently poetry book consisting of one-liners got called out for being more IG caption than poem, a single line can be a poem called a monostich (which my spellcheck has underlined in red to denote: not a real thing). But I digress.

Here are, outside of the poems shared above, a few favourite lines I wrote during this project whose entirety didn’t make the cut of “favourite”:

“A canyon worm-holing around my gut” —Poem for April 11

“Rose-coloured violence popping off like / every delicate matter at the edge of its patience” —Poem for April 1

“Violets quietly blooming like some galaxy in the palm of my hand of my living room of my tiny wonderful life puncturing the space between dust and death before the cats wake up waiting to swipe this slice away / perfect blue and glass splayed like sky slivers on the ground.” —Poem for April 4

“No one is looking at you, we’re all looking at stars / trying to find ourselves” —Poem for April 9

“From here, so wonderful, like carving stars / and labelling them “mine” —Poem for May 1

“The scene is flung into a muddy, fluorescing bruise / every dream and wake, bone and break abandoned—” —Poem for April 2

“Meanwhile, tulips churn in the fields / beside my bones” —Poem for May 6

“Maybe the fish was already in heaven / and its body was just hanging out in hell for 8 minutes and 23 seconds” —Poem for April 15

“Now that the dying is done / I wake up to ripe sounds, strawberries and milk, a concept of self halfway to blonde.” —Poem for May 13 (the final poem)