hello, NaPoWriMo!

today began April, meaning a few things:

it is darling Lucy's birthday!

it is also April Fools Day (and i was fooled a couple times... meh.)

it is ALSO the start of National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo for short :)

the aim for the month is to write a poem a day - for fun, for inspiration, to get back into the habit of scribbling down poetic thoughts or feelings... whatever the case may be. this will be the third year i participate (my Mama and i try to egg one another on from afar!) and hopefully i'll manage to finish this year! every day, the awesome people over at NaPoWriMo.net put up a prompt for the day, as a way to kickstart ideas. you're, of course, not limited to the prompt, but i find it super fun to follow along with their suggestions or ideas and see what i can create!

today's prompt was to create a poem of negation. their example:
if you chose a whale as the topic of your poem, you might have lines like “It does not settle down in trees at night, cooing/Nor will it fit in your hand.”

i tip-tap-typed this out distractedly and reworked it a little in between working like a packhorse on a programme layout/design, but it's still kinda rough. i like it that way, though. it's called not at all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
you are not at all what i expected.

you do not curl up the way a cat does in the middle of my bed;
you are nothing like the foamy lip of the sea, kissing at my toes, and
you taste entirely unlike the tang of citrus on my tongue.

you are not a memory; you do not linger on the fringes of my mind the way they do.
nor are you like a poem with discernible rhythm or rhyme

but i find that i'm

drawn to the way that you
are unlike a glacier
different from a shattered teacup or a weed
the negative of a photograph
the complete and utter opposite of
unnecessary to me.

you are not at all what i expected.

you are instead everything i need.

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so, there you have it - my first poem for the month :) now i'm headed bed-ward - but stay tuned for more poetry out of yours truly!