I know so much more about tenderness than I used to.

August 7Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI read a poem today about a couple on a winter morning, one baking bread, the other shovelling snow,and imagined us for the first timein a different season. saw myself kneading the doughwith both hands. if dough is ready,it springs back when you touch it,stretches thin without breaking –let me shut the door behind you,take the shovel, brush the snowfrom your beard, scarf, shoulders.I know so much more about tendernessthan I used to. my hands are learning to be kinder,reaching for yours across the table, squeezing onceto remind you that this is all real. I feel you squeezing back. yes, there is breadto bake and a sidewalk to clear and a storm on the wind, but I know moreabout patience now, too.about faith. the storm will comeand we will be here, at the table, eating bread with our handswhich belong to each other,watching each snowflake landexactly where it needs to be.

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Natalie Lim is a Chinese-Canadian poet living on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples (Vancouver, BC). She is the winner of the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize and Room magazine’s 2020 Emerging Writer Award, with work published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and elsewhere. She is the author of a chapbook, arrhythmia (Rahila's Ghost Press, 2022).Excerpted from Elegy for Opportunity by Natalie Lim. Copyright © 2025 Natalie Lim.Reproduced with permission from Wolsak & Wynn. All rights reserved. Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Elegy for Opportunity by Natalie LimWolsak & Wynn

Publisher’s Description

In her debut collection, Natalie Lim asks: How do we go on living and loving in a time of overlapping crises? Anchored by elegies for NASA’s Opportunity rover and a series of love poems, this collection explores the tension and beauty of a world marked by grief through meditations on Dungeons & Dragons, Taylor Swift’s cultural impact, the all-engulfing anxiety of the climate crisis and more. Confessional, funny and bursting with joy, Elegy for Opportunity extends a lifeline from Earth that will leave you feeling comforted, challenged and a little less alone in the universe.

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