Day 4 “a hope”

Yesterday’s haiku, “social distancing”, was a bit of a downer. Both versions. But I need to remember that it has taken me months to wrestle with these emotions.

(Fellow Californians, Day 138 of the state-wide shelter-in-place is coming to end as I post this. But, who’s counting?)

With today’s hakiu, I really wanted to take those specific things in yesterday’s poem and literally translate the hope in each of those.

So, on my lunch break, it started out almost line-for-line, mirroring the phone calls and text check-ins. I also wanted to get across that even though our weeks look different and hanging out with our people may look different, Ant and I are still safe and happy and healthy and overall okay.

Tonight, it moved from very specific to a little more abstract, naming the emotions of joy and sadness.

I joke that I’m Sadness. Literal Sadness from Inside Out. I wallow in my sadness. She’s so endearing and relatable to me. For today’s haiku, I switched it up and led with joy #getaftergrowth (jokingly and lovingly adapted from the more popular hashtag #getaftergrateful.)

It feels kinda cheesy to name Hope in the poem since that’s already the prompt, but I liked that imagery of deep breath in, exhale hope.

Ooh! What if I changed the last line–

deep breath in, exhale hope

deep breath in, ex/hale hope

It’s six syllables *facepalm* finding five syllables is hard, guys.

That was some real life creative process happening up there haha

How have you guys found hope in this time?

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The running list of my poems can be found here and you can follow the poets and writers on Instagram at the #30DayHaikuProject.

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Writing Process Notes:

8-4-2020:

// 6.5 mins. Last 6.5 mins of lunch break at office desk. 99 words.

// 7:55pm-like 9am. I forgot to record the end time of actual haiku writing. so it’s included with the blog writing, social media-ing, all of that. Written listening to All Work and No Play (AWNP) podcast, episode 6 and 7. Word count: 335.