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.