NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 15]
Day Fifteen
Welcome back, all! As of today, we’re halfway through another Na/GloPoWriMo.
Our featured participant today is kellysteller, who brings us an Instagram-inspired response to Day Fourteen’s technology prompt (I think I saw that post about the Japanese insect called the “thorny thornless thorn thorn” myself…)
Today’s resource is the Poetry Unbound podcast. Hosted by Pádraig Ó Tuama, each episode guides you through a single poem.
And now for our prompt (optional, as always). K. Siva Reddy’s poem, “A Love Song Between Two Generations,” weaves together repetitions, questions, and unexpected similes with plain language. The overall effect is both intimate and emotional, producing a long-form meditation on what love is, what it means, and how it acts. Today, we’d like you to write your own poem that muses on love, but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners.
Happy writing!
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In Case Someone Needs Fire
Some days I walk through myself
like a stranger using the wrong key
I have never belonged to a room
long enough to call it mine
I stand outside conversations
like a chair no one remembers pulling out
even my name sounds borrowed
in my own mouth
But I have watched women carry grief
like it was part of their skeleton
and I cannot turn away
Still, I know the way my mother folds silence
is the same way the city folds its women
My mother taught me how to endure
without ever naming it
I do not trust the world
but I refuse to leave it defenseless
I refuse to abandon it
I do not love people because they are strong
I love them because they are here
I do not love you because you are mine
I love you because no one survives alone
So I keep a match in my mouth
in case someone needs fire.
~ Oizys.
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Note: I am not usually a writer of love-love, so when I saw today’s prompt I thought, oh, easy. Apparently not. Turns out when the traditional kind doesn’t come naturally to you, the other kinds arrive sideways too... through distance, inheritance, endurance, and the stubborn refusal to stop caring. Anyway, here’s my attempt at a love poem, by my own crooked lights. And I cannot believe we have completed half the challenge already... where did April even go? Also, I wanted to share a resource from my side too: ZinesforFalastin. It feels in conversation with the theme of this poem, so felt right to mention alongside this poem.
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O Dear Goddess or God or Universe. Thank you for planting me in the path of this poet's words.
ReplyDeleteEnough said. You have a way to enter my psyche with your words. And I'm left astounded every time. How do you do it? The way you write about women and silence and society and love is honest and sublime.
Arti, this is such a generous, overwhelming comment. Thank you. I honestly don’t know how to answer “how do you do it?” except to say I stay with the ache until it says something truer than I first meant. I am deeply moved that the poem reached you this way. Your reading of my work (especially around women, silence, society, and love) always feels so attentive and enlarging. Makes me feel seen. Thank you. Your readings make the content of my poems feel fuller.
Delete100% agree with Arti…everytime I read I feel like you are channeling the words of women around the globe. How powerful to feel so seen by someone you have never met. Thank Goddess indeed! I the same thought when I finished reading this — ‘nuff said. mic drop.
DeleteMichelle, this means so much to me. “Channeling the words of women around the globe” feels like one of the highest compliments I could receive, because so much of what I write is shaped by that sense of our shared inheritance, collective echo, and shared survival. We all carry so much in fragments, in silences, in things half-said, and I think I am always trying to listen for that chorus. And “to feel so seen by someone you have never met”... that’s such a beautiful thing to hear. Thank you for reading with such generosity.
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