October 4. 2 am. I feel a nostalgia-induced loneliness after I helped my sister pack her bags and she leaves tomorrow morning, which is in a few hours. So, I come to my room and put my laptop on charge to read some OctPoWriMo poems and respond to comments. I notice I forgot my chair in her room. I go to bring it but she has also locked the door to get some sleep. I responded to some comments and now I am writing this. I don’t know why but I was just washed by this feeling so I thought to just write it down. The songs playing in my earphones are not helping.
I am sitting on the edge of the bed like a temporary chair, the charger wire doing that faint warm hum, the room suddenly too neat like it’s waiting for morning to make a decision. The house has that travel-eve quiet: zippers still echoing, the ghost of lists we ticked and re-ticked. It’s funny how a few hours can feel like a cliff.
The chair behind a locked door has become the whole metaphor. My own seat, but not accessible tonight. I could laugh if I wasn’t this soggy with memory. I keep thinking of all our small domestic choreography... the shared creams, the borrowed stuff, the “where’s my clip?” and how it pauses when someone leaves, even if it’s just for a while.
I try another song. It also doesn’t help. The lyrics keep narrating what I don’t want narrated. I pause the music and the silence is louder, but kinder. Maybe I’ll make some tea. (No, I probably won't. My mother will wake up.) Maybe I will keep scrolling through poems and leave a few comments that sound like I am steadier than I feel.
I know this is ordinary. Sisters leave, mornings arrive, flights take off. But tonight it feels like a tiny season changing in my chest. Maybe that’s all nostalgia is: the weather report of the heart saying, “cloudy with a chance of old summers.” I will sleep soon. Or try. If you’re reading this later today: I am fine, just pre-missing things. Tomorrow I will fetch my chair, open the windows, and tidy the wire spaghetti on my desk. For now, I’ll let the night be what it is and write one more line so the feeling has somewhere to sit.
It’s strange how a small, ordinary night can suddenly feel like the end of an era. Some nights don’t wait for morning to remind you how much has already changed.
~ Oizys.
Friday, October 3, 2025
October 4. 2 am.
OctPoWriMo Day 3. When Fear Gets On Your Hands
What textures do you avoid? What textures scare you? What makes them frightening?
Example Poem: “Web” by Mary Oliver from American Primitive(Aal)
Web
So this is fear.
The dark spider scuttles away
over the underboards.
I watch the blood bead on my skin
and think rapidly:
the last dollar,
the last piece of bread,
lightning sizzling under the door.
Whether it hurts or not
I imagine it does.
I remember a bat caught years ago
in the attic, how he tired
among the swung brooms,
not knowing we would let him go.
I get up to walk, to see if I can.
So this is fear.
The trapdoor
unnails itself; in the dusk
the curtains move
as though the wind had bones.
~Mary Oliver
How does this poem bring textures to mind?
Prompt: What textures frighten you? Choose one or more that brings a clear memory to mind. What rapid thoughts rush in while you’re exploring this tactile memory? Include the textures, rapid thoughts, physical sensations, and the memory in your poem.
[Image taken from Experience Writing blog]
Possible form: A Calligram – The calligram is a form of concrete poetry published by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1918. The calligram creates shapes with words. The shapes are as important to the poem as the words. Unlike typed concrete poetry, the calligram uses changes in size and shape of the lettering, and leaves white space in the image.~
A texture wordbank I made before I started writing the following poem, I did not use all of them, though: ooze, clag, tack, grit, burr, rasp, welt, prickle, thrum, sear, rime, slick, clot, pulp, fleece, chafe, scald, bristle, pucker, drag, smear, crust.
~
When Fear Gets On Your Hands
Glue sheen on the jar rim,
a sugar tack that won't let go.
My thumb strings web to lid,
strand, strand
and the counter keeps a fingerprint of shine.
Under it, the wood has a grain that runs the wrong way,
lifting splinters like small, sharp questions.
Kettle hisses; steam salts the air;
it kisses; then stings the knuckles; so I flinch late,
somewhere the fridge coughs and swallows it back.
Skin answers first:
prickle along the forearms,
sweat beading into beads into a slide,
a salt rime at the lip,
salt tracks I didn’t vote for.
Brain files a memo marked ORDINARY:
breakfast, weekday, sunlight behaving itself.
Body returns it unread, stamps URGENT in red,
sticks the paper to my wrist,
and I still think: this is home, surely this.
Every texture gangs up,
grit in the tea tin hinge,
a hinge-rasp that files the air,
denim rasp at the crook of the knee,
the elastic’s bite mapping a border I didn’t draw.
Bus-days return: strap-tack stamped in my palm,
denim rasping the knee, AC breathing cold.
Body says go; brain says: it’s only four stops.
I steady the jar, twist past the sugar seam.
Threads snap. The lid burps loose.
A sugar smear rings the mouth.
For one soft second, nothing clings to me,
then breath catches on a burr of air,
paint blisters at the jamb; a splinter scouts my thumb; my palm slicks,
and I remember the door that didn’t open,
the paint that blistered like a warning,
the way a lock can learn to think about other things,
a knob that only seems to move,
and still, I say it out loud, to set the skin at ease:
I’m here. Not safe, maybe—
just here.
The hand unsticks. The day goes on.
~ Oizys.
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