I often begin my Sundays with a writing prompt - usually poetry. I particulary loved this one. The prompt is:
Write about what this life, this living, has taught you, how it surprises and upends you, or delights and endears you. Write about what makes you weep with joy or sadness, or how it brings out the best of the worst in you. If you need a place to start, try using the refrain from the poem, “It’s going to…” and list all the ways in which this glorious, brutal, profound life is yours. It is going to belong to you.
This came from Amber Tamblyn, filling in for Suleika Jaouad on her beautiful “Isolation Journals” on Substack.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theisolationjournals/p/this-living?r=ldbuz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
It’s going to be a sunrise
over and over again, begging you to pay attention
It’s going to sit you in the back seat
even when you’ve yelled “shotgun” at the top of your lungs
It’s going to bleed pomegranate seeds
turning your fingers bright red
It’s going to be a knock knock joke
“orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
It’s going to caress your cheek, kiss it, lick it
warm you right up
Its going to wake you from a dream, toss you in a shower
tell you to keep on marching
It’s going to make you question everything
before you walk away
come back
walk away again
It’s not going to last long enough
for you to become a three million miler
…..you can’t go everywhere
Its going to kill you
for sure
It’s going to scare you
with its tenderness
and splendor
It’s going to make you wonder
at its wonder
It’s going to burn baby burn
with bad decisions
as you flirt with the arsonist
It’s going to awaken you
with butterfly kisses and piercing alarms
It’s going to hurt
a fine line between pleasure and pain
It’s going to be frittered away
with scrolling and tv and ho hum
It’s going to fly by
some days will be long
It’s going to break you
rebuild you, and better
It’s going to leave marks
seen and unseen
It’s going to find you bedside
saying goodbye much too soon
Its going to rock you with its miracles
help you to believe
It’s going to entice you with its magic
force you to look beyond
It’s going to swaddle you
It’s going to strangle you
It’s going to recreate you
from sticks and stones and clay and rain
you will be stunning
it’s going to make no sense
a riddle, a rhyme, an off tune ditty
the answers will come, or they won’t
Its going to entice and thrill and overwhelm
a breakfast of endorphins
you will gobble them up and ask for seconds
It’s going to bore and cheat and scare and beat you
you will want to give up
until….you smell the ocean, see the moonrise, hold a hand
It’s going to make you soft
break through your shell
remind you, repeatedly, you are loved
Its going to make all you know obsolete
progress runs faster than you
It’s going to make you gasp
with delight
fall to your knees
It’s going to bring out your “less than”
when you forget oneness
It’s going to be a paragraph
that should be a word
a phrase that should be better
It’s going to feel like achy joints, itchy skin, and blurry vision
as the parts fall apart
It’s going to feel like broken dreams
with happy endings
It’s going to be raw
When you long for well done
It’s going to be a puzzle
with a piece missing
a lesson in unfinished business
It’s going to be pure bliss
for a moment or five
It’s going to be wonderful and awful
It’s going to be enchanting and disillusioned
It’s going to teach you what you need to know
(on repeat, until you listen)
It’s going to remind you to love
when you hate
It’s going to cause you to laugh
and wipe away your tears
It’s going to be a mystery
much left unanswered
It’s going to be stranger than fiction
and lovely with romance
It’s going to be high peaks
and desperate valleys
It’s going to drown you
and resuscitate you
It’s going to be a sunset
beckoning, on the horizon
It’s going to be all right.