The Aftershock Review
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)
Day 48 - Ask yourself questions you don't want to answer
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Day 48 - Ask yourself questions you don't want to answer

Today consider this poem by Linda Gregg:

NEW YORK ADDRESS

The sun had just gone out
and I was walking three miles to get home.
I wanted to die.
I couldn’t think of words and I had no future
and I was coming down hard on everything.
My walk was terrible.
I didn’t seem to have a heart at all
and my whole past seemed filled up.
So I started answering all the questions
regardless of consequence:
Yes I hate dark. No I love light. Yes I won’t speak.
No I will write. Yes I will breed. No I won’t love.
Yes I will bless. No I won’t close. Yes I won’t give.

Love is on the other side of the lake.
It is painful because the dark makes you hear
the water more. I accept all that.
And that we are not allowed romance but only its distance.
Having finished with it all, now I am not listening.
I wait for the silence to resume.

From Alma
Graywolf, 2002.

Those central five lines are phenomenal.

So today I ask you to ask yourself those same questions.

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