Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but that no one is awake (or around) to notice.
So, I didn't follow the brief (exactly), but this spooky event from my childhood came to mind, took hold, and wouldn't let go.
My father was at the plant, called in by the night shift manager, some problem only he could fix. Everyone asleep, the house still. I had a library book open, three days already late, a murder I needed to finish. Footsteps crossed the hall. Bathroom faucet: on. Full bore, the way he always left it. Then past my door, into the kitchen— pots, the sound of someone looking in the wrong cabinet. I called his name. Turn it off. My mother’s voice came back: he’s been asleep beside me this whole time. In her room, my brother lay the way only he can sleep: a rock, a fact, inert and total. He still can. Faucet still running. My mother shut it off. We had both heard the walk from bathroom to kitchen. We had both heard the pots. No one came out of the kitchen. No one came back down the hall. We stood in the doorway longer than we needed to. Then we went back to bed, the three of us, in her room. My book still open on mine.
Prompt Inspiration
Via NaPoWriMo
In her poem, “The Flying Nightdress,” Mandakranta Sen describes something fantastical and strange that occurs while the rest of the world is asleep. The imagery of the poem is dreamlike, but the situation it describes is otherwise presented quite straightforwardly.
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