I am unbearable and unhinged. I cannot hold my tongue back from its urge to mock and trill, my throat from spewing its song vomit of improvised musicals—so one-note and limited in vocabulary, but a songbird all the the same. I am made of maybe and almost, saving all my finish lines for overdone daydreams and underdeveloped poems, but I can entertain myself for hours and long weekends with only my words and imagination. I’ve lived such a fortunate, average life, I have to rely on secondhand sorrow for a good cry, someone else’s someday-maybes to convince myself to stay. My seasonal affection disorder never really goes away, which is to say, I can burn like the last candle on the longest night of the year and blizzard in July. I am heart-shaped marshmallow twinkling in a coal eye. I am a broken clock refusing to be abandoned. I am setting down the minutes in my own time, never caging the barn swallows and loon songs that bloom like arias from their seeds.

Prompts used (tags are the poets’ IG handles):

@angelealowes - “I’m not much, but I’m all I have” @imandq + @ml.mecham + @laur_enough - “of maybe and almost” @loisofthehearth - “A list poem naming what you refuse to abandon, what you’re ready to set down, and what grown-from-winter truth you want to” @kaytpoems - “I am unbearable and unhinged” + “the chill never really goes away” @alexismromo - “heart-shaped marshmallows” @lorrainefaepoetry - “coal for eyes” @itsashenelthing - “seasonal affections” + “convince me you’ll stay” @jasmine.s.higgins - “broken clock” @theconstantpoet - “secondhand sundays / secondhand sorrows”