NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 25] - The Window Keeps Its Own Counsel

NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 25]

Day Twenty-Five

Hello, all! Happy Saturday, and happy 25th day of Na/GloPoWriMo!

Our featured daily participant is Behind Door Number 3, where the response to Day 24’s “strange things at night” prompt involve socks going on walk-about.

Today’s resource is Boston University’s video archive of lectures and conversations stemming from former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinksy‘s course on The Art of Poetry.

And now for our (optional) daily prompt! In her poem, “The Apple Tree in Blossom,” Melissa Kwasny strings together several fantastical metaphors for the apple tree, before shifting into exclamations, definitions, and a series of nimble, tonal shifts – and seeming changes in topic – before circling around back to the apple tree. Today’s challenge asks you to write your own poem in which you use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea with which you opened the poem.

Happy writing!

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Note: Day Twenty-Five asked for three metaphors for a single thing, an exclamation, a rumination on definition, and a return to the opening image. So, naturally, I chose the window, because apparently I cannot leave rooms alone. So, here is my offering for Day Twenty-Five.

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The Window Keeps Its Own Counsel

The window is a thin aquarium
where weather swims past
pretending not to look in.

It is also a border
that learned transparency
as a public relations strategy.

It is the house’s most polite eye,
open all day,
reporting nothing.

Outside, April goes on
with its usual administrative cruelty:
heat entering early,
birds filing complaints in the wires,
a neighbour’s pressure cooker
hissing like an old accusation.

Inside, my mother folds a towel
with the patience of someone
who has been taught
that order is a kind of prayer
even when god is not listening.

The window brightens.

Traitor!

I say this softly, of course.
Even my outrage has indoor manners.

What is a window, anyway?

The dictionary says:
an opening in a wall
for the admission of light and air.

Admission.
As if light has filled out a form.
As if air has stood in line
with two passport photos
and proof of address.
As if anything that enters a room
does so legally.

There is another meaning too:
a period of opportunity.

Small laugh.

A window, then,
is either a hole in the wall
or a scheduled chance
to escape through one.

Both seem optimistic.

At work, they say
we should circle back
when there is bandwidth.

At home, the ceiling fan
circles back all afternoon
and still arrives nowhere.

My unread emails breed quietly.
My salary sits in the corner
like a relative everyone knows
has failed me
but no one wants to insult aloud.

Somewhere, a country
is being translated into rubble.
Somewhere, a mother
is counting children
with a mouth that has forgotten
how numbers end.

Here, the window takes in light.

Here, the light lies down
on the floor
like nothing has happened.

I want to be fair to the window.

It did not invent distance.
It did not invent the room.
It did not invent the human habit
of seeing suffering
and calling it elsewhere.

Still.

All day it holds the world
just far enough away
to be bearable.

A tree leans into its frame,
green and shameless.
A crow lands on the railing
with the confidence of a bad omen
who has tenure.
The sky, that old absentee landlord,
collects its blue rent
from everyone.

For a moment,
I almost forgive beauty
for arriving without a plan.

Then the window shows me my face
laid over the street,
my eyes floating above the traffic,
my mouth superimposed
on a woman carrying vegetables home,
my forehead ghosted
over a scooter, a dog, a torn poster,
the ordinary republic
of things continuing.

Reflection:
from reflectere,
to bend back.

Of course.

Even looking out
is another way
of being returned to myself.

By evening, the glass darkens.
The aquarium becomes a mirror.
The border becomes a bruise.
The polite eye closes halfway
and keeps what it has seen.

My mother asks me
to shut it before the mosquitoes come in.

I do.

The room grows smaller,
as rooms do
when they are pleased with themselves.

Outside, the tree keeps moving
after I have stopped watching.

Inside, the curtain settles
with the tired dignity
of a woman who has worked all day
and is still expected
to soften the light.

And there it is again—
the window,
thin aquarium,
transparent border,
house-eye,
holding back the whole weather
with one pane of glass.

~ Oizys.

After-note: A small resource from my side: Since today’s poem keeps returning to looking, frames, and the fragile business of witnessing,  I came across this today and wanted to leave it here with the poem: another aperture, another angle of light. So, for anyone who may want to support Gaza creatives. The initiative is accepting photography, original artwork, and short-form writing, and making prints from the contributions with profits going toward Gaza. Please read, share, or contribute if you are able. Gaza's Creative Allies.

NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 24] - Night Shift

NaPoWriMo 2026 [April 24]

Day Twenty-Four

We’ve made it to the final Friday of National/Global Poetry Writing Month 2026, everyone!

Today’s featured participant is Poem Dive, where you’ll find a rather heavy response to Day 23’s villanelle prompt, but one that showcases a particular quality of the form — in deft hands, the repeated lines can have a sort of dolorous, bell-like quality, as the poem were tolling its refrains.

Our resource today is this curated selection of letters written by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, in which he explains aspects of his thinking about poetry.

Finally, here is our (optional) prompt for the day! In her poem, “The Flying Nightdress,” Mandakranta Sen describes something fantastical and strange that occurs while the rest of the world is asleep. The imagery of the poem is dreamlike, but the situation it describes is otherwise presented quite straightforwardly. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but that no one is awake (or around) to notice.

Happy writing!

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Night Shift

At night, when no one was awake to accuse the world of anything.

A spoon bends toward the moon. 
A towel remembers the body. 
A closed laptop keeps typing my unsent thoughts.

The office chairs rearrange themselves according to who suffered most that day.
My unread emails grow teeth. 
The cursor blinks like a small, unpaid ghost.

Somewhere, a map quietly changes its mind.
A yellow line eats its way inland.
A border rinses its hands in the dark.

After midnight, the room began returning everything I had swallowed.

While I sleep, my body holds a meeting without me.
While I sleep, my stomach lights a small fire and reads old insults aloud.

My ribs shift furniture. 
My skin sheds one invisible version of me.

On the balcony, the plants whisper in my mother tongue. 
A cup of water grows a tiny moon.

My blanket rises like a hill and shelters all the tired women you have been.

No one sees any of this.

By morning, even the magic has folded itself away.

My mother slowly wakes up and turns the night into yet another morning of labour.

~ Oizys.

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Note: As Israel occupies Lebanon with its “yellow line,” I wanted the poem to carry, without naming too much, the way a border is used to carve a wound in the dark. Slow Factory Super Fund for Lebanon: An urgent fundraiser supporting families in Lebanon affected by ongoing bombardment and displacement, with donations distributed directly for immediate shelter and food needs. Good night.