Not Poetry
Subverting the prompt, as usual.
The basement had settled into that particular kind of late where everything feels a little too still. Daisy was loafing on the couch next to my desk, positioned in a way she could see me. The light above the desk was harsher than it should be. I could hear the old furnace cycling next to me, a soft whine of the blower starting, then a gentle hiss-poof of the gas being ignited. It did nothing to warm the room. It was the usual backdrop for these prompts Bradley Ramsey posts every week, the ones that cause me to replay the same little ritual: I gripe, I resist, I eventually give in.
This week: Identity, emotion, a song pairing.
But the genre this week? Poetry.
I stared at the prompt long enough that the screen’s glow started to hurt my eyes. The idea of writing a poem sat in my gut like something medically inadvisable. Or maybe it was the tacos I had for dinner earlier. I typed the first line that came to mind, because inertia is its own kind of courage sometimes. It didn’t survive two seconds before I erased it. I tried another. That one died faster.
The cursor blinked in that steady, impatient way that manages to feel like Satya Nadella himself is mocking me.
I didn’t notice the air shift at first. A faint current moved through the room, not cold exactly, but charged. Then the scent drifted in—burned sugar threaded with ozone and something floral enough to be unsettling. It moved past the stale smell of old carpet and dust like it owned the place.
I know that smell. I looked over to the wall by my guitars. It didn’t change. No neon, no mural. The pale-yellow drywall just stared back at me. But I know she’s coming.
“Now is not the time, Kira,” I said, looking back at my computer desk, my jaw clenched involuntarily.
My headphones crackled. I hadn’t touched anything. A few seconds later the opening swell of ELO’s “I’m Alive” faded in as if it had been waiting for a cue.
“Kinda late for poetry, isn’t it?”
Her voice always landed like it’s catching me in the middle of something I don’t want to explain.
Kira stood behind me, close enough that I didn’t have to look to know she was smiling. No cosmic gateway this time. No dramatic arrival that bent the room around her. Just her in a pale dress, skates still, posture relaxed and amused, like she’d come to watch me wrestle my own incompetence.
“You could’ve warned me,” I said, still facing the screen.
“You could’ve tried not to open with Poe,” she replied. “He’s not your style. I knew him, you know. You’re not him.”
I didn’t know if I should take that as an insult or a compliment. So I ignored it.
“I was warming up,” I said.
“That explains the burning smell.”
I gave her a look. She gave it right back, unbothered. Her attention shifted to the prompt on the second monitor. She read it with a kind of slow, deliberate interest, the way someone studies a puzzle they already know the answer to but want to see if you’ll reach it on your own.
“Always the sourpuss, aren’t you love,” she said. I looked back at the monitor.
“Let’s see the prompt.” She leaned into the second monitor. “Identity. Appropriate.”
“I didn’t pick it,” I said. “I’m just following the rules.”
“That’s the part that fascinates me.” Her tone softened. Not kind, just knowing. “You always answer these prompts. As if the universe will revoke your license to write if you skip one.”
“I’ve skipped before, Kira,” I said, trying to justify myself.
The truth is I have skipped them in the past. A couple around Christmas. Most of the Indulgences around Halloween. I’d just been busy with other projects, or just busy with life.
“I’m not a poet,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
She shifted her weight, wheels whispering against the concrete. “You wrote poetry when you were younger. Song lyrics in your twenties.”
I turned slowly in my chair. “No. We’re not going there.”
“I’ve seen the notebooks.”
“You have not.”
“Spiral-bound. The ink bled through the pages. You were committed.”
“Kira—”
“Oh, don’t start. The ‘heart’ and ‘depart’ rhyme was a literary disaster. They still teach it in Muse training as an example of why we exist.”
I pressed a hand to my forehead. “Fantastic. Glad you’re entertained.”
“And the poem about me,” she said, ignoring the warning in my voice. “Before I had form. Before you understood what you were making. You must’ve rewritten it twenty times trying to make lightning sound romantic instead of dangerous.”
“I was fourteen.”
“You were sincere,” she said, “and disastrously earnest.”
I let out a slow breath. She enjoyed this more than she should.
She studied me for a quiet moment. “You’re not bad at poetry,” she said. “You’re uncomfortable because you can’t hide behind structure. Prose gives you places to tuck things. Poetry doesn’t.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
She conjured a rolling office chair from nowhere and sat beside me. It was an absurd gesture, but she managed to do it without breaking the realism of the room. That was her trick. She could disrupt the world without disturbing it.
“You know what your problem is?” she asked.
“I’m sure you’ll tell me even if I say no.”
“You keep trying to write poetry like you’re being graded. You’re a grown man hiding from a blank page like it still has the power to ruin your weekend.”
“It does.”
“It shouldn’t.” Her voice softened again, the kind of softness that isn’t mercy so much as accuracy. “You’ve been writing about identity for years. You do it better than most people.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s the same,” she said. “Except now the structure is smaller and you feel exposed.”
I didn’t argue. She wasn’t wrong.
She leaned back in the chair, arms folded. “You’re frustrated. That part is obvious. That’s your emotional anchor. That’s what you feed the poem. You don’t need serenity or revelation. You need honesty with teeth.”
She stood up now, the chair disappearing from under her. Her skates rolled in a small arc behind me, wheels rasping lightly on the laminate floor, a sound too soft to be threatening but too deliberate to ignore.
She stopped behind my chair. I felt her hand rest on the headrest, light but certain. She let it linger, and I could feel her eyes on the back of my skull like she was trying to read the answer off the back of it.
“Don’t tell me you’re considering sincerity,” she said.
I shook my head.
“Of course not. I’m going to subvert the prompt. It says the genre is poetry. Nothing there says I can’t write a story about not writing poetry.”
She exhaled the way someone does when they’re equal parts resigned and entertained.
“God forbid you do anything the way it’s written.”
“I’m consistent.”
“You’re impossible,” she replied. And she’s right.
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” I remind her.
She backed off a little bit, like she was giving me room to breathe. In reality, she was just bracing for what comes next.
“So,” she said, “I guess the only thing left is what music are you choosing to score this heroic descent into self-loathing?”
I hesitated. That was enough to make her groan. I didn’t even have to say it. She already knew.
“Don’t,” she warned.
“Folks,” I said, a little too loud and proud, “I’d like to sing a song about the American Dream—”
She braced herself like she was preparing for impact. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s happening.”