You might have heard about NaNoWriMo --National Novel Writing Month, an event taking place in the month of November, where thousands of writers across the nation try to write an entire novel in the span of one month. It takes a lot of work and several thousands of words per day (the novel has to be at least 50,000 words) to finish. It's something that I've attempted before, but never really been able to complete. Maybe someday!
On a related note, April is also known as NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), where writers across the nation try to write one poem a day for the entire month of April. It coincides with National Poetry Month anyway, and it's a fun and slightly less strenuous exercise than NaNoWriMo.
This past April, I completed 30 poems in 30 days, written about a myriad of topics such as my last year of high school, past romantic encounters and personal struggles with identity and such. I'm happy to say that I found them again just recently, on a file on my laptop, and have decided to continue to publish a few of them for the first time:
6/30
i have long grown sick of this
sticky summer heat;
sliding down my spine
bubbling, prickling, melting under my skin
like i could just slip it off
if i so please
its hot.
f*ing hot.
everything’s either dull or sharp;
sounds, tastes, knives.
i either laugh too loud
or not at all.
i see red every time i move.
i have come to hate
southern california in the spring;
empty high school bathrooms,
the smell of vomit,
and this choking, burning
heat.
lord, send me some rain.
let it wash it all away and
color my world in blue.
- 6/30, "observations on the day i forgot to take my meds"
7/30
when I think about how
last night i went to bed
in tears
and how today
i feel like pushing all the buttons in an elevator
just to see them light up
you make me feel like that
when you smile it’s like
stopping on every floor
and every time the doors open
its a new day
-7/30
8/30
i had an odd thought
while on the bus today,
sipping at my coffee with
a lipstick stained straw:
it isn’t “you are what you eat”
it should be “you are what you drink”
i’d rather be like the taste of
cà phê sữa đá in the spring;
strong
but still sweet.
- 8/30
9/30
i am like
three days behind on poems
so this is more like a shout
into nothing, more than anything
just something to say ‘hey i was here’
i am still here
its a lonely sort of sound
- 9/30
10/30
my mother asks me
if i would have preferred
my father had married an asian woman instead of her
i look down at my plate
not sure what to say
how do i tell her
the shame that lingers under my skin
when i cannot talk to my grandparents in their language
when strangers stop me in the street
to ask, ‘what are you?’
how do i tell her i whisper the words 'half-blood’ to myself
in the quiet spaces when people aren’t listening
because i feel as though that’s all i’ll ever be
i tell her, no, of course not
there’s no one else i’d rather be than me
what she doesn’t understand is that
sometimes it doesn’t feel like 'both’
but rather
most of the time it feels like 'neither’
- 10/30
