I Could Not Care Less About The Light Switch - NaPoWriMo Day Fifteen Prompt intermediate, mediate, or whatever, I do not need its technical portrait imprinted on my retinas. As if you scored those wires on my eyelids instead of crumpled fists of paper our bedroom littered, yes, yes, our bedroom where I am so desperate to be sleeping, duvet to forehead, clawed over the ears, this unbidden seminar of light switch electronics threatening to blow a fuse in our marriage-- I DO NOT CARE! I do not need to know why the switches won't match when the lights are out. And we have tried every combination every puzzle box of on and off to make them fall in to a uniformed march. It was never a why question, but a general annoyance of a thing seeming out of place, like unmatched salt and pepper pots! Not purposeful, but one being oh-so-slightly shorter? Thinner? More rounded on the corners? Not a, "this is salt, and this is pepper difference" just difference you can't quite pin down or turn off, like the bloody light switches you won't stop explaining, or drawing at two a.m. when I mistakenly say 'I'm still not getting it?' Which I admit was really my fault so I'll take the next round of circuitry analysis in stride but gods above, will someone smite me, and while you're at it, hit the lights.
With The Other Mums In The Park - NaPoWriMo Day One Prompt discussing our bodies, like sharp beaked harpies picking clean the carcass of what was once a woman we recognised in mirrors. In the reflective surfaces of car doors, and shop windows with a matching stride, strut, stance, shape. We all have new shapes we do not know how to fit or dress, so we press ourselves into old clothes and old ways, pretend the chafing is our imagination or temporary discomfort, like the first run back, after a week on the beach we are picking sand out of our hair and baby vomit from our clothes. It is all fine we say, and it is all not, the taste of carrion on our tongues like an iron bit we gnash between our teeth when anyone suggests we are not already beyond anything we thought we could manage.
I’ve veered away from the optional prompt with my Day One poem. I took the ‘body’ idea and ran with that, so I might have to circle back to writing a prose poem. I did have some debate about posting my NaPoWriMo responses online, as it means I can’t submit them to various journals who only accept entirely unpublished work, but since I’m currently wading through rejections from those journals I decided to go ahead and just post. I’m probably going to tweak and polish the day fifteen poem for the Ledbury Poetry Slam at the end of the month, and I’m really quite fond of my Day One poem. Thoughts and feedback are also welcome in the comments, so if you enjoyed either poem I would love to hear from you. Otherwise it can feel a little like shouting into the void.
“Hello void, how very nice to chat with you again. How’s the wife?”