NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 13th): We are the eggshells he loves walking all over

From NaPoWriMo 2025 (Day Thirtheen): Happy Sunday, all – I hope you have an enjoyable thirteenth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Chronicles of Miss Miseria, where the response to Day Twelve’s symphonic, Stevens-inspired prompt fires on all cylinders.

Our daily resource is the online collection of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, founded in 1947 by Brazilian businessman Assis Chateaubriand. Here, you’ll find everything from old masters to mysterious photographs.

Finally, here’s our prompt for the day (optional, as always). Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings,” plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and (as far as I know) self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the second and fourth line of each stanza repeat an end-word or syllable; he fifth and sixth lines also repeat their end-word or syllable. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that uses Justice’s invented form.

Happy writing!

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A note before I start: WOW. I got featured! I had so much fun writing it yesterday, and when I saw today's post, I realized I had been featured. I feel like I’ve achieved Nirvana, haha! This is actually a life-defining moment for me. I never even imagined getting featured, and yet here I am, receiving such beautiful comments from other participants. This keeps me going—not just in writing, but in life as well. Thank you, everyone!

Last night was particularly tough. After wrapping up a very exhausting work week, I sat down to write a diary entry for the blog but couldn't finish it. Then, this morning, a pleasant surprise awaited me, which made things a bit better. So, I decided to take the bits and pieces of the entry I had written last night and turn them into poetry by fitting them into Justice’s self-invented form. Does it have a name? Is it called the Loop? Or the Tandem?

Anyway, I was a bit jittery today, mood-wise, so I used this syllable counter because I kept losing track. It took me the entire day to shape that entry into a poem. Now, as midnight approaches, and with it, the burden of a new work week, I’m just posting whatever I could conjure up.

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We are the eggshells he loves walking all over

We are the eggshells he loves walking all over,
Not with fear, but thrill, like it's all part of the game.
He steps in silence but leaves thunder in the hall,
He does it softly—still, it’s all part of the game.
We try to warn each other when he’s shifting moods,
Again, we brace, pretend it’s wind that rattles moods.

I learnt to read the air before I learnt to read.
His belt hung quiet, and the silence said obey.
I bit my tongue so hard I almost named it, mine.
The air grew thicker, and the silence said obey.
I watched Mom fold, then fold again, then look away—
When he begins to speak, where I go is away.

Mother folds her rage into napkins, perfectly,
While he notes on dinner like we’re hosting a play.
We learn to smile through clenched forks and paper roses,
We keep the table set, like we’re hosting a play.
We nod, and no one mentions how we never breathe,
You might crack beneath his gaze, if too deep you breathe.

He speaks and we all break in the silence we’ve kept,
Not a voice by us, just a specter of his name.
The house trembles as if it too cannot forget,
Not a word for us, but a shadow of his name.
The weight of this love presses down, and we try to hold,
Except we fold, while waiting for the weight to hold.

- Oizys.

Another note after we are done: From today's resource, I got to know about this artist, Maria Auxiliadora da Silva, and I found this painting of hers called Três mulheres (Three Women) and I was immediately interested by its raw intimacy. there’s something deeply emphatic about the way she portrays the women, almost as if their stories are being told in silence, through texture and color. It felt uncannily aligned with the emotion with which I was writing today. These three women, in the painting, rooted, expressive, enduring. It kept me reminded of the mother and daughters in my poem. There’s pain there, yes, but also a strange kind of dignity, a defiance that doesn’t shout but holds. I’ve been feeling scattered and cracked lately, like I’m trying to carry too much in too many directions. But looking at her painting kept me going while I wrote today's poem, and then rereading what I’d written, I felt seen. Maybe even held.

It’s strange how art finds you exactly when you need it. That's why, I love this year's NaPoWriMo theme. Her painting and Justice’s form, gave me tone and structure: together they formed a sound medium to hold the fragments. Not fixing everything, but making something from the brokenness. Just a poem, or a breath, or a painting of three women, holding their ground.