Today’s prompt pulls us into memory—the kind that feels cinematic when we look back on it. Between Kavya Janani U’s striking blackout poem and the reflections on (mis)translation by Yuki Tanaka, there’s a clear thread today: how the smallest choices—what we remove, what we keep, what we remember—shape meaning.
For me, Amarjit Chandan’s poem Uncle Mohan Singh immediately brought back memories of my grandparents. Not a grand sweeping moment—but the quiet, everyday theater of their relationship. The kind of love that sounds like bickering, looks like routine, and echoes long after the room goes quiet.
Here’s my poem for today.
“Another Drink Before Bed”
Ken Ford
sat in his chair
like it was assigned to him at birth,
remote in one hand,
mischief in the other.
Ned—
Nedaleen if you were being proper—
moved between kitchen light
and living room shadows,
already knowing
what was coming.
“Well,” he’d say,
stretching the word thin,
“I guess I’ll have another drink before bed.”
A test.
A ritual.
A spark tossed into dry kindling.
Glasses clinked louder than necessary.
Cabinet doors closed with opinion.
Time passed—
just enough.
“Guess I’m off to bed then,”
he’d grumble,
like a man forgotten.
From the kitchen,
a storm under her breath—
sharp, quiet,
aimed but never thrown.
And right on cue—
“Quit your mumblin’ out there,
or I’ll send ya down the road
talkin’ to yourself.”
Silence—
then us,
trying not to laugh
from the other side of the room.
Because this was love,
in their language.
A push.
A pull.
A line cast out
just to feel it tug back.
And he always finished the drink
anyway, who was he kidding.
sure wasn’t her.
It’s funny what stays with you—not the big milestones, but the rhythm of voices, the timing of a joke, the way love can sound like friction and still be something steady underneath.
This one felt like sitting back in that room again.
If you want to explore more voices answering today’s prompt. Step beyond this page and into the wider current of #NaPoWriMo—where each voice bends the world in its own way. You can find them here: https://napowrimo.net/
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nailed it!