Instructions on Not Giving Up

by Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Reflective writing prompt: Write about what gets to you.

Reflective writing prompt: Write about a time you dodged a bullet.

Another Night at Sea Level

– Meg Day

On the third day, I wrote to you

about the sky, its elastic way

of stretching so ocean-wide

that the only way to name it

was to compare it to Montana’s.

Lately, the sky is a ceiling

I wake to: broad & blank

& stubborn, stiff at the edges

like a fever cloth wrung out

& gone cold in the night, damp

with the wicking of latent ache.

But tonight I was walking

home along the coastline

& caught the huge moon

in my throat. There’s a man

somewhere on the planet

who has been to that moon,

who has stepped out of that sky,

& will never sleep the same

because of it. Will always be

sad or feel small, or wonder

how it is a person can be

a person, if being a person

is worrying about things;

whose eyes cannot see

what things are, but only

the slightness of them.

I think of writing to you

in this way—welcoming

the adventure of it—

& of being wrecked

Reflective writing prompt: Write about a time you welcomed an adventure