29th April 2026. 9:57 PM.

29th April 2026. 9:57 PM.

Tomorrow is the last day of NaPoWriMo. Last year, I remember writing a more openly heartfelt closing post. This year, I do not know yet what kind of ending this April will allow. It has been hotter, angrier, more interrupted, more crowded with news, rooms, bodies, windows, and small refusals. So I am preparing this tonight and leaving the door open for tomorrow’s mood to enter.

This April contained: windows left open against instruction, sirens, a cup with tea-darkened edges, pasta, news alerts, mother’s voice in the kitchen, father’s lunchbox, shoulder carrying yesterday’s argument, crows, heat, unfinished sentences, poems posted late, comments from strangers who became a temporary room, one notebook pretending not to know how much of the month it has swallowed, the strange daily embarrassment of still wanting language to do something, and the small stubborn ritual of returning to the page anyway.

And then there was one. I do not know yet what April has made of me this year, except that I kept showing up, late sometimes, tired often, but here. Maybe that is not a victory. Maybe it is just attendance. But some months ask for attendance like proof of life.

So I am preparing this tonight and leaving space for tomorrow’s prompt, tomorrow’s mood, and whatever weather the room decides to bring. Maybe the final poem will be gratitude. Maybe it will be exhaustion. Maybe it will be one more inventory of what survived.

For now: one more night before the last poem.

There is still the country, refreshing itself with the confidence of a bad machine. There are still people elsewhere being counted badly or not at all. There are still people elsewhere being counted badly or not at all. There is still the poem, which does not save them, which does not save me, which has the decency not to lie about this. But it remains on the table. A small stubborn object. A witness with ink on its hands.