Day 24 of Na/GloPoWriMo is here ✍️🔥
Today’s prompt invited us to stretch language in multiple directions at once—layering metaphors onto a single image, shifting tone, pausing to define a word, and then circling back to where we began. It’s a challenge in control and release at the same time… letting the poem wander, but trusting it to find its way home.
For me, that “one thing” became whiskey—something simple on the surface, but loaded with memory, meaning, and weight. I leaned into metaphor, into reflection, into the quiet conversation between firelight and thought.
Here’s my response:
“Whiskey, Defined by Firelight”
The whiskey sits in the glass like a held breath,
amber and waiting.
It is a lantern in a dark room,
a slow-burning leaf in October,
a quiet confession you didn’t mean to make.
Oh—how it catches the light!
It flickers like a memory you can’t outrun,
like your father’s voice in another room,
like the sound of your own name said years ago.
What is burn?
Not just heat—
but the language of distance closing,
the body remembering something it never forgot,
the soft violence of feeling returning.
The fire answers in cracks and small collapses,
wood folding into itself like an old argument.
And the glass—
it lowers, it empties, it becomes
just a shape in your hand.
Still—
the whiskey sits in the glass like a held breath.
This prompt really highlights how a single image can carry an entire emotional landscape if you stay with it long enough. Sometimes the poem isn’t about moving forward—it’s about deepening what’s already there.
If this piece resonates with you—if you find something of yourself in the fire, the glass, or the quiet between the lines—consider picking up a copy of Whiskey and the Autumn Wind. There’s more waiting for you in those pages.
Whiskey and the Autumn Wind is a collection rooted in the same season you’ve just stepped into—where the air turns sharp, the light grows softer, and everything begins to let go. These poems carry the weight of memory, the burn of reflection, and the slow, steady acceptance that comes with change. There’s a glass on the table, leaves at your feet, and a voice that doesn’t rush—only lingers where it matters.
If you’re drawn to poetry that feels lived-in…
to quiet moments that echo long after the page…
to the kind of writing that sits with you like a late autumn evening—
then this collection is waiting for you.
You can find it here: Amazon, Barnes and Noble or direct from IngramSpark
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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