NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentyeight

Sometimes I talk too much.

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(I have entire conversations in my sleep.)

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

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The limit of my world is the limits of my language.

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No ideas but in words.

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You are not your words.

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Are you talking to me?

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You have the words of life. Or death.

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I’ve wanted to tell you that for so long.

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It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.

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Come; let us reason together.

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The right words in the right order?

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That’s enough, now.

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Use your words.

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentyseven

We were looking for ways
to move a body through space.
And time. We were looking for more
ways to reflect the body
with words. With light.
 
We spent so much time
in the dark, light leaking
through the cracks.
Lines spidering the lens
every time the eye moved.
 
Or the body. Perhaps
the body is an eye, a hand, a mouth.
A song, a regret, a mystery to be solved
or never solved.
 
Or it is a surrender.
A decision to wait and keep
waiting. To fill ourselves
with light as it etches
the details onto the eye.
 
I wish only to see you
how I once saw you.

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentysix

The corners keep getting tighter.
The edges keep getting sharper.
The margins keep getting thinner.
 
They told us to prepare for the future.
They told us “things will get better.”
They told us to just. Keep. Moving.
 
If only I had worked harder.
If only I had made better decisions.
If only I had said yes more often.
 
Let’s just keep facing the mountain.
Let’s just keep searching for what was lost.
Let’s just keep asking too many questions.
 
I can’t possibly do everything you ask.
I can’t pretend to “do it all for love”.
I can’t do more than that.

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentyfive

go ahead,
fill your pockets.
or  empty them.
 
go ahead,
fill your hands.
or  empty them.
 
this is the hard work,
the things we carry with us always:
the ways in which we’ve struck out
in anger, or held tightly in fear;
the hurtful words spoken
in public or in secret, foolish
acts committed on impulse.
we begin again
once we exhaust our excuses.
 
go ahead,
fill your boots.
keep walking.

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentyfour

They told me everything had burned.
There was nothing they could do;
the fire moved too quickly.
Like gossip. Like anger.
No one had taken an inventory.
How would we rebuild? How much
do we really remember? Years
of stories, milestones, memories.
Everything fades. What we once held
as true becomes too much work,
or the weight of marking time
throws us off balance, pushes us,
pulls us one way, then another,
the ground shifting, wind,
fire in the ground smouldering
for days, weeks, months.
Now we keep watch. We try
to keep our footing.