JX Valentine
Your aquatic overlord
- 3,277
- Posts
- 20
- Years
- Harassing Bill
- Seen Aug 19, 2020
Lawl, first thread in this forum since I was in high school. Figures, right?
This also serves as my entry for the poetry contest. It just sort of took off and went on for a couple of pages, so I figured it'd be best to just put it in its own place and link. Incidentally, I mostly write free verse, so I kinda threw the usual conventions out the window. The only other thing you need to know is that the poem is best read with a pause at the end of every line (and longer ones between each stanza).
So... yeah.
Sprout
There is a seed
in a pot
by a window
in a room
with a bed
in which lies
a little girl
who has been there
for three months,
and the seed
hasn't sprouted
in two,
and the nurses
all give her
sympathetic eyes
because they know
this number
equals five
which is one less
than the number
the doctors gave
to the little girl
and her mother
the morning after
the results
of her blood screening
came back,
and her mother cries
by her bed
in the hours
before she goes to work
while her daughter
is asleep,
dreaming
of the snowy night
when she and her mother
went out and made
snow angels.
Every morning
as soon as she wakes up
the girl pulls the pot
in her lap
and bends over it
(She once had long hair
that would fall around the pot,
but she doesn't anymore.
It fell out.)
and whispers to it
"grow grow grow"
even though
the seed doesn't sprout
and hasn't sprouted
for two months,
then three,
then four.
One morning
the doctors said
there was nothing more
they could do,
so they let
the girl's mother decide,
and she took her daughter
back home
to the apartment
overlooking
that same park
where they made snow angels
one cold night,
and over a cup of coffee
that same morning
the mother remembered
that night:
how cold it was
how much her baby's smile
glowed
in the light
of streetlamps,
how pink she looked
and how she coughed up blood
the next morning.
Every morning
for the next few days
as soon as she wakes up
the girl pulls the pot
in her lap
and bends over it
(She used to do this voluntarily,
but now it's the only way
she can sit up.)
and whispers to it
"grow grow grow"
until she can't.
The morning she doesn't
the mother cries
by her bed
and decides
not to come in
to work that day
or any other day
for a long time.
Two weeks
after the girl--
her mother's
only baby
by a father
who hasn't been around
since before she was born--
is dressed
and viewed
and cried over
and buried,
the mother realizes
that she hasn't been
in that room
for awhile,
(and how could she
after losing
her baby
and the smile
that glowed
in streetlamps
and gave her
reasons,
so many reasons,
to go to work
every morning?)
so she goes
and unlocks the door
and steps inside
to see the pot
by the window.
There was a seed
in a pot
by a window
in a room
with a bed
in which once lay
a little girl
who had been sick
for a very long time,
but now,
in the pot
poking out
of the soil
which hasn't touched water
since the girl
stopped telling it to grow
is a tiny,
green
sprout.
This also serves as my entry for the poetry contest. It just sort of took off and went on for a couple of pages, so I figured it'd be best to just put it in its own place and link. Incidentally, I mostly write free verse, so I kinda threw the usual conventions out the window. The only other thing you need to know is that the poem is best read with a pause at the end of every line (and longer ones between each stanza).
So... yeah.
Sprout
There is a seed
in a pot
by a window
in a room
with a bed
in which lies
a little girl
who has been there
for three months,
and the seed
hasn't sprouted
in two,
and the nurses
all give her
sympathetic eyes
because they know
this number
equals five
which is one less
than the number
the doctors gave
to the little girl
and her mother
the morning after
the results
of her blood screening
came back,
and her mother cries
by her bed
in the hours
before she goes to work
while her daughter
is asleep,
dreaming
of the snowy night
when she and her mother
went out and made
snow angels.
Every morning
as soon as she wakes up
the girl pulls the pot
in her lap
and bends over it
(She once had long hair
that would fall around the pot,
but she doesn't anymore.
It fell out.)
and whispers to it
"grow grow grow"
even though
the seed doesn't sprout
and hasn't sprouted
for two months,
then three,
then four.
One morning
the doctors said
there was nothing more
they could do,
so they let
the girl's mother decide,
and she took her daughter
back home
to the apartment
overlooking
that same park
where they made snow angels
one cold night,
and over a cup of coffee
that same morning
the mother remembered
that night:
how cold it was
how much her baby's smile
glowed
in the light
of streetlamps,
how pink she looked
and how she coughed up blood
the next morning.
Every morning
for the next few days
as soon as she wakes up
the girl pulls the pot
in her lap
and bends over it
(She used to do this voluntarily,
but now it's the only way
she can sit up.)
and whispers to it
"grow grow grow"
until she can't.
The morning she doesn't
the mother cries
by her bed
and decides
not to come in
to work that day
or any other day
for a long time.
Two weeks
after the girl--
her mother's
only baby
by a father
who hasn't been around
since before she was born--
is dressed
and viewed
and cried over
and buried,
the mother realizes
that she hasn't been
in that room
for awhile,
(and how could she
after losing
her baby
and the smile
that glowed
in streetlamps
and gave her
reasons,
so many reasons,
to go to work
every morning?)
so she goes
and unlocks the door
and steps inside
to see the pot
by the window.
There was a seed
in a pot
by a window
in a room
with a bed
in which once lay
a little girl
who had been sick
for a very long time,
but now,
in the pot
poking out
of the soil
which hasn't touched water
since the girl
stopped telling it to grow
is a tiny,
green
sprout.
