I’ve been the archer,
Aiming for the sun, not knowing it would fail–
And so, I’ve been the prey.
Falling from sky blue heights right into the dark,
Wiped off blood, and stood my ground again;
Over and over, I’ve been the archer.
Being stubborn and headstrong, with a mind so sharp,
Never did save me from the pain,
For, I’ve– also– been the prey.
I’ve outgrown clothes and places, lost my spark,
Scars that marred, that seem to say,
“I’ve been the archer.”
I’ve stayed hidden, hoping it’d all come to pass,
Spent phases of the moon asking myself,
Why I’ve been the prey.
When fires fail to burn on a winter so stark,
I will remind myself, once again:
I’ve– only ever– been the archer,
I’ve– never– been the prey.
~© Shubhangi Srinivasan.
Now that is what I call a challenging prompt. Short poems aren’t my thing, and I never feel like it’s enough. I have so many feelings. Now that I think about it, it truly felt like I’d been breezing through the poems for this year’s NaPoWriMo season for the first ten days. But today’s prompt put a rest to all of that. This is my favourite part of NaPoWriMo. Learning about new forms of poetry. Well, new to me, at least. In the last few years, we’ve been given prompts that have challenged us to explore so many different forms of poetry. I feel like even when they have not been my best, it has been a fun learning experience. It’s not a dull, boring class in school, it’s something we get to learn by actually writing, and putting more of our thoughts into art.
The prompt for day 11 via napowrimo.net is to write a villanelle, which is a highly structured form of poetry that follows the A1 b A2/ a b A1/ a b A2/ a b A1/ a b A2/ a b A1 A2 format, with five tercets followed by a quatrain. This particular challenge, however, asks us to incorporate a refrain from a song in the poem while also loosely following the villanelle format, using the refrain to talk about opposing ideas. The prompt did say we didn’t have to stick to a rigid rhyme scheme but I tried to stick to one, just to challenge myself a little more.
Naturally, I turned to the song titled ‘The Archer’ by Taylor Swift because it has always held a deep, personal meaning to me. Of course, writing a villanelle means half the poem is already complete, what with all the repeating lines! But, the real struggle here is to make something new and meaningful out of the refrain that I’ve used for inspiration here. Oh, and if you’re curious, here’s the song I’m talking about:
While the original song is actually about love, and I’ve decided to swear off of writing about it for this year, I put my own spin on it by writing about the cycles of growth we go through in life. Outgrowing things, learning that some things that we once dreamed of are out of reach, but being stubborn enough to pursue something that resembles it anyway, picking ourselves up even on the days we didn’t want to, and so much more. It frankly might not be my best work, but I think I did the refrain some justice anyway.
And, because it’s now officially the weekend, I am very excited to see what tomorrow’s prompt is going to be. I’m going to have extra time to think about it and write something good, and that gives me something to look forward to tomorrow!
See you with a new poem, then?
Yours truly,
The Shubhster.
If you like my poem, please do leave a comment or follow my blog! I write a lot of random but interesting stuff, and I try to keep it real. If you think someone you know would appreciate the things I write, feel free to share my page with them! You can also reach out to me on my Twitter or Instagram handles. I always appreciate seeing new people come up to me and tell me they like what I write! It doesn’t happen as often as I would like for it to, but let’s change that, maybe?
This has been day 11 of 30!
See you tomorrow?
Cheerio! Xx
Featured Image by Kostya Mikryukov on Unsplash
The Shubhster Diaries 
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