NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 29] - After Opening the Same Window

NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 29]

Day Twenty-Nine

Happy Wednesday, all, and happy penultimate day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month!

Our featured participant for the day is Sunra Rainz, whose response to Day 28’s six-line-poem prompt reminds us to seize the day (and wear the dress).

Today’s resource is The Poetry Exchange podcast. Each episode not only explores a different poem, it discusses why that particular poem has been a “friend” to a particular interviewee.

Finally, here’s today’s prompt (optional, as always). In “After Turning the Clocks Back,” Jennifer Moxley links present with past, using a few well-placed details to invoke both a sense of the daily “now” and a nostalgic sense of the speaker’s long-ago life. In your poem today, similarly compare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past and present in the reader’s mind.

Happy writing!

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Note: Firstly, thank you to every single one of you who appreciated by poem yesterday. I will definitely find some time to respond to all of you. Now. Day Twenty-Nine asked us to compare our everyday present life with our past self, using specific details from both the daily now and the long-ago then. Since this is the penultimate poem of April, I suppose it is only fair that the month has started asking for evidence: who were you, who are you, and what, exactly, has been misplaced between the two? So here is my offering for Day Twenty-Nine:

After Opening the Same Window

Today, I open the window
before the room can become an argument.

Heat enters first, then the neighbour’s mixer,
then a motorbike, then one crow
with the confidence of a minor official.

My laptop is already awake,
blue-lit and accusing.
The inbox has multiplied overnight
like a rumour with funding.

On the table: one steel glass,
one half-finished cup of tea,
one notebook pretending it is not judging me,
one phone carrying the world’s fresh injuries
in a font designed for convenience and aesthetics.

This is my life now:
checking the news before brushing my hair,
answering emails with a body
that has become very good
at storing weather and warning
in the same shoulder.

But once, I was a girl
who thought morning meant only morning.

Once, I sharpened pencils
with a red plastic sharpener
over the dustbin
and believed the curled shavings
were proof that something useful
could come from being reduced.

Once, my schoolbag smelled
of tiffin, pencil box, raincoat plastic,
and the faint metallic panic
of unfinished homework.

I wore two tight plaits
that mother braided
and carried a water bottle
that leaked into my books
like a small private monsoon.

I thought the future
would arrive properly dressed.

I thought adulthood meant
a table of one’s own,
a clean cup,
a door that closed,
and nobody asking
why one’s face looked like that.

Now I have the table.
Now I have the cup.
The door closes badly.
The face has become evidence.

The girl I was
stands in the corner sometimes,
still in her uniform,
still holding a compass box
with one broken hinge.

She watches me read about another city
being turned into smoke
while the pressure cooker whistles
as if nothing has happened
because something is always happening
and lunch must still be made.

She asks, is this the future?

I tell her, yes, unfortunately,
but look, we still keep notebooks.

She asks, did we become brave?

I tell her, not exactly.
We became observant,
which is less heroic
but harder to confiscate.

She asks, did we learn to speak?

I tell her, sometimes.
Often late.
Often after the room has emptied.
Often with the window open,
so the sentence has somewhere to go.

Outside, the crow has returned
to inspect the railing.
Inside, the tea has darkened.
The laptop waits.
The country refreshes itself
without apology.

I pick up the cup.

Somewhere in me,
the girl with the leaking bottle
and homework panic
leans closer.

She wants to know
if we are happy.

I want to be honest,
but not cruel.

So I say:
we are still here.

I say:
we have become the kind of woman
who opens the window anyway.

I say:
we no longer mistake morning
for innocence,

but sometimes,
before the first notification,
before the heat fully enters,
before the day files its charges,

there is still a second
when the light touches the floor
like an old friend
who remembers our name.

~ Oizys.

After-note: The penultimate poem. Strange little word, penultimate. It sounds like something wearing spectacles and carrying bad news politely. A postman? One more day after this. One more window. One more attempt to make April give back at least some of what it has taken.