Author Hiria Dunning runs a weekend writing prompt over on Bluesky called #pretendpanel. Each week, she comes up with fun challenges that really make you think about the answers. I’ve been participating (when I can) for a while now, and I encourage you to do the same. The premise is simple: pretend you’re on an author panel answering the offered question. This month, the prompts have focused on short verse form, something that is not my forte. I’ve jokingly pointed out that even when I set out to write a short story, it turns into a novel on me.

I love short stories, but I truly believe they are an art form I don’t possess the skills to create. Ditto with poetry. Today’s #pretendpanel prompt was about sharing some short-form writing, either your own or a favorite of yours.

I used to write poetry in high school. Didn’t we all? Fortunately, most of it went by the wayside. I’d kept a few favorites in a notebook but when I went to find the notebook this morning, I couldn’t locate it. Do I still have it somewhere? I don’t know. I have lots of blank notebooks. Beautiful, funny, inspiring blank notebooks that I leave blank because I’m afraid of ruining them with my messy handwriting and messy thoughts. But that is another story altogether.

Odds are the notebook–the one with a handful of semi-terrible poems–is around the house someplace. It’s also equally possible it got lost in a move, or tossed in a fit of Marie Kondoism. Who knows. I’m not even sure I mourn its loss.

But there is one poem I wrote that I’d regret losing, and fortunately, I found a copy in my dropbox.

I’m sharing it as part of the #pretendpanel prompt for today

Siblings

With shaking hands, I performed the rituals that would keep the room safe.
That would corral the monsters everyone said did not exist and seal them in the closet overnight.
But the magic could not keep out the noise, the sound of raised voices and splintering wood.

In the morning, I looked down through the shattered railings, shocked by the raw wood visible beneath the white paint, as though broken bones were sticking out from underneath torn skin.

And he was gone…like he did not exist.  Not to be seen again, except on rare occasions, like Christmas and funerals.  And we did not speak of him, not son, not brother.

Lying in a heat-soaked room, living for the breathless moment when the fan would oscillate in my direction.
Gasping for air like a little bluegill.
She left her narrow bed and knelt beside me, whispering, “If you don’t stop making that noise, I will kill you.”

She, who chose to hold adulthood at bay by starving her body into adolescence.
Littering our room with the detritus of desiccated meals not eaten.
She who ran away and hence did not exist, not spoken of again, not sister, not daughter.

And I, praying not to exist, began painting my room in beige.  Beige walls, beige eyes, beige hair, beige skin.  With each stroke of the paint brush, I am not here, I do not exist.

She of great passion and raging talent would not go away quietly.  She left in a storm of slamming doors and bitter tears.  She, too, ran away, existing but not existing.  A fledgling with her mouth open in a nest far away.

I stumbled into a wall today, paintbrush in hand.  Stared in shock at the gray paint dripping from the end of the brush, an anemic life force spattering on the floor.  With shaking hands, I performed the rituals that would unlock the door, the door that had long since been painted over.  I am here, but I do not exist.  I cannot leave.  I am the Good Daughter.

There you are. My one and only adult attempt at poetry. Maybe I can find a use for those blank notebooks after all.