#NaPoWriMo Day 6: Wistful at Windermere.

Today’s prompt via napowrimo.net has been, by far, the toughest one.

The challenge was to write an acrostic poem, or a variation of it, really. An acrostic poem is one where the poem spells out a word with the first letters of each line. In this variation, the first words in each line when read together, form a line of poetry. We were told we could choose newspaper articles or similar, so the lines I chose were “Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die, I don’t belong, and my beloved, neither do you. Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry, I’m setting off, but not without my muse” from ‘The Lakes’ by Taylor Swift.

If you’re here, please go check out the poems written by my best friends, Kittu’s Modern Mixtape and Amour Infini. They are brilliant writers and I am so grateful that I get to do NaPoWriMo with them!

Happy reading! Xx

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Take things as they come–
Me for who I am,
To see if I could ever be
The one you saw in the depths of me–
Lakes so black and cold,
Where ventures no sane soul;
All this while, if I’d known,
The deepest, coldest lake was you,
Poets would pen their tragedies on how I
Went willingly
To the depths of you, only to die,
Die, and die until nothing was left of me.

I suppose ‘twas such a shame,
Don’t you?
Belong to someone,
And hand them your heart;
My heart was taken long ago–
Beloved, I never stood a chance,
Neither did you ever give me one–
Do you enjoy these games?
You do. I know you do.

Those words I wrote comparing
Windermere depths to you,
Peaks to the heights I’d go for you,
Look faraway and alien,
Like they came from another pen–
A poor imitation of mine,
Perfect to a stranger, not me–
Place lower in your life than I do;
To hope for more would be a lie,
Cry me a river, while into the lake I cry.

I’m standing here again,
Setting myself up for pain,
Off to memories of you
But all I did was lose,
Not without reason,
Without lessons to gain,
My words will stay long after I go,
Muse or no muse.

~© Shubhangi Srinivasan.

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Featured Image by Jonny Gios on Unsplash