Three lines is not much room for love, which may be why it suits the subject. The form will not let a poet explain themselves. There is space to set something down and no space to defend it, so what survives tends to be the true part: a gesture, a small betrayal, one image that carries the rest.
These poems were chosen from the Three Line Poetry archive. Some are tender and some are not. Love here includes the kind that has curdled, the kind that arrives too late, and the kind that is remembered rather than held. Each poem links back to the issue it appeared in, where you can read the rest of that issue's poets.
36 poems from the archive
Short poems about first love and desire
Kisses and late-night talks from the early, reckless part.
Her lips were heart shaped
She was so beautiful
She sang love songs
Travel every day
Roam the earth in sweet romance
Surrender to love
Underwater love;
tentacles twining sweetly—
alien caress.
Scarlet lips kiss a song
Fingers tickle ivory
Whiskey pours, lovers drown
Conversing anything to keep our late-night talks
Your voice, my love, brings beat in my heart
energizing even at midnight
Precious, dazzling love
Each time so fresh and new
Come again, and welcome.
You flow through my art-
eries, bringing in new air
circulating love.
rumpled sheets
perfumed with odors of love—
visiting newlyweds
time placed between
two parked cars—
ducking in for a kiss
Love, an image dark
before warm light enters room.
Exposed, yes I am.
Smoke pours from your heart
Your body an inferno
I am oxygen
pencil skates on sheets
wood on wood like skin on skin
a lover’s intrigue
Three wishes I have:
two bodies, one heart,
and zero regrets.
Short poems about love that lasts
Long marriages and parents: the slow kind of love that shows up in hands and habits.
Moonlight on mountain,
blanket of snow covers slopes.
My love’s warm embrace.
Her hands define a lifetime of love
caressing, creating, cajoling, claiming
the shadows of a heart’s work
we aged & not like love would’ve
how invalid & wanting
how sadly perfect
My favorite time of
day - he arrives by school bus
to embrace his dad.
Thorns surround my agave heart;
spirit and knowledge rest within;
one hundred years to flower.
No, Baby! Don’t
French-kiss the world
one socket at a time.
His arms, dark wings, around me,
cheek against my sun-bleached hair
in the familiar way of lovers.
Short poems about longing and memory
Love that is remembered or wanted but never quite held.
I was certain I was in love
I was not young
Dark birds eat out my heart
the ocean loves me
but is not IN love with me
and now the sun, too.
loneliness beckons with a drawing heart
sadness fills the lonely path
happiness eludes the sacred desire
My dead grandmother’s voice.
"A boy once kissed me."
I grew light as a ghost.
Fragrance of lilac recalled
another place─Montparnasse—
where she fell in love that spring.
My books are the lovers
When the flesh is absent,
And the night is still young.
from the black heart of the forest
a kingfisher soars skyward
wings sable against the sun
he loves me
but how does a daisy know
and why must I tear it apart to get the message
Short poems about heartbreak and loss
Goodbyes and last kisses, and what is left afterward.
Young lovers kiss on a bench,
Make love on soft pillows--
They die not knowing their names.
Inexperienced in love,
she wore her heart on her sleeve.
He left a permanent mark.
raindrops--
his last kiss
goodbye.
dogs teeth puncture
the skin of my breath—
nothing like love
Labyrinth of thoughts...
A heart of glass and
Crystal tears of sorrow
butterflies, stormy skies
schools of fish, a final kiss
inky mess- rorschach test
I ran as fast as I could,
and as hard as I could muster—
until my heart gave out.
unbloody (pain left behind)
sacrifice (love snatched up
to heaven, to here)
How to write a short love poem
Three lines will not hold a whole relationship, and the poems above do not try. Here is what they do instead.
Pick one moment. Barbara Shapiro's poem is a single afternoon, a boy getting off the school bus to hug his dad, and that one scene says more about love than a summary of it could.
Reach for the body and the senses instead of big words. "Forever" and "always" are hard to make new in three lines, while rumpled sheets or the smell of lilac do the work on their own.
Let the last line change the meaning. Judith Arner starts with the old daisy game and ends by asking why the speaker has to tear it apart to get the message. C.B. Anderson counts down from three wishes to "zero regrets." The turn is where a short love poem earns its place.
Do not name the feeling. The heartbreak poems here almost never say sad. "raindrops-- / his last kiss / goodbye." trusts the image.
If you write in three lines, send us your poems. For the shapes the archive uses, from haiku to the tercet, see the forms of three-line poetry, or browse more three-line poem examples.
More poems by theme
From the Three Line Poetry archive