Christine and I worked together this week, following the optional Read Write Prompt of collaborating with another participant.

Over the course of several days, we wrote this poem through e-mail. We went back and forth, one stanza at a time, each of us providing a stanza. I started the poem off, and Christine ended it. We kept the same pattern throughout — each stanza containing four lines and each line containing four syllables. There was more to the poem, but we cut the beginning off, since the poem really seemed to start once we got into the restroom. There was some stuff going on in a house and inside a car, but that didn’t seem to be the heart of the poem.

We did a little bit of editing once we were done, and below is what we came up with.
* * *

Wrong Places

On the walls of
the bathroom stalls,
“No” is written
repeatedly

over words of
love and anger.
Who erases
proof of feeling?

If I were to
write anything
on a bathroom
wall what would it

say about me?
Strawberry girl
looking for love
in wrong places,

like these dank stalls.
When did it come
to this, thinking
too long about

scrawled words from
strangers, drunken
missives, and not
my own wisdom —

like tarot cards
with all the good
ones gone missing.
For a good time,

call the Empress
of abundance,
grounded to the
earth. Don’t call me.

Someone’s written “No” all over the elevator walls: No, No, No.

Just when I’ve settled into the short days, the days start getting longer.

I shall evict my uterus for raising a ruckus inside me.

(Yes, it’s that time of the month. TMI. Deal with it.)

Tonight all the leaves skitter across the streets like rodents, so I swerve.