Tuesday, April 24, 2018

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 22: Perfect

Prompt: Take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens - 

The sun can’t rise in the west 
A circle can’t have corners
Pigs can’t fly
The clock can’t strike thirteen
The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky 
A mouse can’t eat an elephant.


Still catching up. The one that first caught my attention was 'A mouse can't eat an elephant', since I'd done the elephant previously. On second reading though, 'A circle can't have corners' started waving at me, and then settled in my brain to percolate, which led to thoughts of how glass blowers start with a round blob of glass, then press it into a mould that shapes it into something which could have angles. Which in turn led to serious problem solving of how a circle could still maintain itself as a circle but still have corners, and then everything sort of snowballed and here we are.

I'm not very happy with this, it feels lacking, but in the interests of catch up, it still gets posted.


PERFECT

The ring is a symbol of constant faith and abiding love
Precious as its material, a perfect circle with no end.

She felt its unfamiliar curve, cool as a damp leaf
As it slid onto the fourth finger of her left hand
Never dreaming that it would grow and swallow her whole
Until she was trapped within its golden arc
Or that he would force her into the narrow angles
Of his ideals - of love, of her.
Everywhere she looked there were shadows
Cast across the endless circle of her being
Corners where monsters came to hide and ghosts
Rose from the grave.



2 comments:

Jane Dougherty said...

I like it. I think it's the last line that makes it, turns the circle into a trap.

Shuku said...

Thank you Jane! It was a bit of a headscratcher to write at first, honestly - but I'm going to put that down to a full day of travel, work-related worries, and brain not working. I'm glad you like it - the circle is indeed a trap. Full of odd non-Euclidean angles and corners and such.