NaPoWriMo – Day 4/April 4, 2021
The photo attached to this poem is the one I choose – there were several good ones, but this one “spoke” to me.
Here is the prompt, and the link if you choose to look at some of the photos!
And last but not least, our daily optional prompt. Poetry often takes us to strange places – to feelings and actions that are hard to express except through the medium of a poem. To the “liminal,” in other words – a place or sensation that exists at or on both sides of a boundary or threshold, neither one thing or the other, but something betwixt and between.
In honor of the always-becoming nature of poetry, I challenge you today to select a photograph from the perpetually disconcerting @SpaceLiminalBot, and write a poem inspired by one of these odd, in-transition spaces. Will you pick the empty mall food court? The vending machine near the back entrance to the high school gym? The swimming pool at what seems to be M.C. Escher’s alpine retreat? No matter what neglected or eerie space you choose, I hope its oddness tugs at the place in your mind and heart where poems are made.
Memories
My excitement was palpable
as we walked into the newly opened,
wickedly posh and outlandishly expensive
new fine dining establishment.
It did not disappoint with plush
mauve velour and smoked glass everywhere
a menu audacious enough not to post prices
the atmosphere and clientele were enough
to make a simple young girl swoon
enjoying an evening never forgotten.
Years later finding myself in that same town,
swept away with nostalgia, I went back
to that splendid location and as I
peeked between the boards to see
the crushed fast food paper cup sitting
on the back of a circular booth
that had held me captive so long ago
now bringing me to tears as the
realization washed over me that
sometimes memories should stay just that.