I feel very grateful to UMKC for hosting writing events. I enjoy the structured time to write and the extra accountability it adds. I’d like to start my own writing group, but I don’t know many young writers who live in my area. I know there are a ton, but I don’t necessarily know how to reach out to them. I’ll have to do some research on that, because I’d love to host a writing group.
Today I’m focused almost exclusively on creative writing, which is wonderful and a rare opportunity to really lock in. I started the day with some warm-up poetry and plan to work hard on my current short story this afternoon.
These two poems are more or less two different children birthed from the same idea. They’re both very lightly edited and not much more than ideas spit out onto paper, but I’m glad to stay in the practice of writing poetry and might potentially shape them up a bit in the future. The first is a villanelle, and the second is a sonnet.
I would like to add that again, these are small ideas or events that are magnified for creative pursuits. I look forward to being married, getting great at compromise, and maintaining my own sense of self 🙂
A Villanelle for Compromise
In fourteen days, I am getting married.
But when two souls become one,
How does one voice not get buried?
Reasoning outdone with emotion, parried,
compromise camouflaged as a handgun.
In fourteen days, I am getting married.
Innocent conversation so easily miscarried
when loaded, the barrel only points one direction.
So how can one voice not get buried?
But with each other, we train to be sanctuaried;
we learn firearm safety before coming undone.
In fourteen days, we are getting married.
Over time, communication improves–serried
with hills and valleys, but together we outrun
The idea that one voice gets buried.
Hand in hand, barrel to barrel we’re ferried
To a future with tension unspun.
In fourteen days we are getting married.
For some, how does one voice get buried?
Individuality for Two Sonnet
In fourteen days, I am getting married. I will add a ring, a last
name, add a story, a heart, a life, a dream. I will create
an extension of me and when his thoughts blend with my
thoughts and his mannerisms become my mannerisms, how
do I ensure that his dreams do not become my only dreams?
When his rough knuckled fingers intertwine with mine, small
and dry, how do I know my own appendages when I am also recipient
to my own caress? When I lay down to rest I wear his t-shirt, briefs,
pillowcase. When I stir in the middle of the night I turn and meld our bodies
into one sleepy, sweaty mass of him. And when I think of my future I think
of his because inevitably they are the same. In fourteen days my father’s last
name will join with his father’s last name and my soul will join with his soul,
because I do not know how to just be me. And so tell me, when lives intertwine,
how does the soul stay unknotted?
A Penny For Your Books 
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