Thursday 1 December 2022

Prompt Advent Calendar - Day 1

Hello and welcome to another month of writing prompts that will take us all the way up until the new year! Hopefully, some of these will encourage and inspire you to write and I would love to see what you come up with.

December always starts off on a fairly solemn note. And I want us all to honour that in some way. December 1st is World AIDS Day and I want you to write in honour of those who have fought it, who have researched it, who have died from it. However you feel is best to write about it. There are no restrictions on form.


Remembrance

And here you used to sing. And here you used to dance.

In this old hidden backroom, crouched low beneath the bridge 

and calling out as sanctuary to each wanderer, each nomad 

soul with split lip with guilt with longing with black eye with 

pink blush with curiosity with running legs that haven’t stopped 

moving yet since the doors swung shut behind them.


And here you used to love. And here you used to breathe.

The one place in your padlocked world that the keys were given 

freely and you could fill your lungs - to inhale the music of other bodies 

and breathe out your own song. To heal yourself in the arms of another 

boy like you. To smoke and drink and laugh and fuck in dark corners 

and become the beat of music become a dance floor.


And here, we now tie ribbons. And here, we now lay flowers.

In this mausoleum of this club where only ghosts can hear the pulse 

of speakers and feel flash of disco lights. A man with thinning hair and

eyes filled of innocence long broken clears his throat to sing:

“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken, there’s a pain goes on and on”

I look see your outline in the corner, listening to his lament.


Because here you used to sing. And here you used to dance.

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