"Write yourself as the moon: hovering, silver-tongued, faraway and somehow still at home. Give your..."

“Write yourself as the moon: hovering, silver-tongued, faraway and somehow still at home. Give your sadness a new hobby, comb his hair, scrub his face then tell him to go out and play in the mud. Write your mother as a garden, name what now grows in her absence. Spell your name with different letters, borrow the algorithm of joy, become an ocean, or a stop-sign, or well-done laughter. Write grief as a good lover then break his thieving heart. Conjure a potion for your loneliness while shaming each ingredient for trying to cure your kind of quiet. Drag your grief in by the tongue, become a ventriloquist for the dead. Give your fevered heart a pill then confess why you might prefer the sickness. Write your body as a vacant city. Whose name is plastered across every billboard? Write your father as a father. Do not give him a metaphor as a crutch or a compliment. Write what happened as a series of ors, unborn that unwanted returning. Write your trauma as a wedding vow then leave that ghost at the alter. Poem your blood a bedtime story. Poem your pulse tomorrow’s sun. Write what happened then write every reason it was not your fault. Write every if of your body as fact. Write your suicide note as a résumé, list every good reason love deserves to hire your hands. Poem yourself a praise-dance. Poem yourself a holy and godless church. Describe your joy as a boundless child then give that child siblings. Translate birdsong. Brag about your teeth. Your body is a country, what valuables are beneath your skin? Do you have more bridges or boarders? Your body is a living thing, what do you water it with? Your body is blood and bone, who has mistook you for a metaphor, for smoke? Conjure a ghost to keep you company. Write grief as a god, then nail his hands to a cross. What must die so that you can survive? Write every reason to end your life, then give each reason five fresh hearts. Write your heart as an object, what new invention pumps your blood? What season best sings you alive? If only once, write the future as nonfiction. Poem your pain as a gospel song. Take each scar to dinner. Decorate a casket for your grief then lower it beneath winter. Write yourself as water, as a thing that keeps the earth alive and yes, go ahead. Write yourself dead, buried and unbothered. Give your bones to the earth, then write yourself in seven resurrections, clawing your way through the dirt.”

- Donte Collins, “A guide to stay alive: a list of writing prompts” more here: dontecollins.com

Related post