#NaPoWriMo #Day24 #HoldingPattern #OffPrompt

Holding Pattern

I’m eating a Jamaican vegetable patty.  

It tastes normal,  

and that feels wrong,  

because my world is upside down.

I’ve left her bedside.  

I know it’s sensible  

to rest, to eat, to bathe.  

But how can I eat a patty  

when the world is upside down?

I want to be at her bedside.  

I’m afraid to leave.  

Every crow I see  

caws definitively 

is it a battle omen,  

a harbinger,  

or just a crow being a crow?

Friends ask what I need.  

I ask for scraps of poems,  

to cobble together a road map  

through this place  

where nothing points north.

I keep thinking of cats,  

meowing to come in or go out,  

never satisfied,  

always torn between doors.  

That’s me.  

Inside. Outside.  

Wrong either way.

I listen to podcasts about recovery.  

I scroll Facebook and a Timehop reminds me  

I posted about what happens  

to the brain when we die —  

that it floods with a million  

happy memories.  

Please let that be true.  

Please let her be warm with them.

I text cousins and aunts.  

I busy my hands  

while the crucial 48 hours  

count themselves down.  

We’re 24 hours in.

I’m torn between sitting at her bedside  

and not wanting to get in the way  

of the people trying to keep her here.  

My traitor eyes won’t stay stoic.  

I know it hurts her to see me cry.

I’ve come home  

to collect photo albums,  

and things to read aloud,  

because they say you can still hear.  

So I will speak.  

I will tell her she is loved.  

I will keep vigil,  

even when I step away.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day23 #Pendulum #OffPrompt

Pendulum

Tonight, 

off‑prompt, 

I fluctuate

fugue-swing
 Weigh gratitude in one hand, 

fear in the other. 

Hope flickers. 

Grief breathes. 

I’m too tired to choose a feeling, 

so I let them all sit beside me 

until sleep's mallet seduction.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day22 #ManagementTrack #ConversationsWithYourself

Management Track
The boar snorts, says leadership is a path you scent,
not a rota you laminate.
Management counts acorns; leadership knows
which forest needs re‑growing.
I tell him I’m tired of holding clipboards.
He tells me clipboards don’t stop a charge.
“Walk first,” he says, “then others follow.”
“Root deep,” I answer, “so the ground remembers.”

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day21 #FifaByAnyOtherName #Nicknames

A Fifa by any other name...

1. Fifa

child‑tongue stumbles, named

by a cousin testing sounds

a nickname takes root

2. Baldric

hatching cunning plans

while scrubbing vases in that

fancy flower shop

3. Troglodytes

wren‑shaped heart, hopping

small but loud as any storm,

tiny yet mighty

4. Queenie

circle gathers close;

I hold court with open hands,

straighten others’ crowns

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day20 #DYouKen #AnimalMyth

 

D’you ken —

Log-toothed builder,
Flame-lipped crow,
Dusty eco-engineer.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day19 #SiansYellowRoses #Florilegium

Sian's Yellow Roses

I. Energetics

Yellow rose, sun-aligned, a rising flare,
petals like a lion’s amber gaze.
Warming the solar plexus, seat of will.
Rosa foetida, born in the Caucasus foothills,
Persian Yellow, foremother of every golden bloom.
Named foetid by European botanists
who loved her colour,
but not her sharp, wild scent.

II. Language of flowers

In Victorian parlours,
bouquets spoke in code:
yellow for jealousy, for love grown thin, for warning.
Now the meaning softens:
it speaks of friendship, of joy,
of unfettered feeling
between those who choose each other freely.
Language sheds its skin; petals remain.

III. Rose as remedy

Rosehip and yellow petals cool heat-tired skin,
a gentle astringent for summer’s excess.
Solar herbs steady the heart,
lifting the soft fog Saturn leaves behind.
In the garden’s small apothecary,
the yellow rose stands, warm-handed,
a tincture of brightness,
a quiet gold that calls the spirit home.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day18 #GlimmersAgainsTheEnding #WhyYouWrite

 

Glimmers Against the Ending

I write because the light keeps calling.

Each workday I leave the house,

connect, perform modest miracles,

and daily haikus pin that to memory.

I write because the dark sits waiting,

madwomen in attics, old lace.

On the page I can gently question it,

let my inner sage speak.

I write because the world keeps ending;

some days I don’t want to fight that.

Still, I gather small glimmers

like, bread crumbs of hope.

I write because I refuse to vanish,

rewilding myself as much as a species,

sunlit, shadow-stitched, a glorious contradiction

moving toward whatever comes.