Poetry Challenge #20: Poetry Mini-Challenge

Before we get started, please check out the excellent dramatic monologues submitted over the last week here.

For today's challenge, I happened upon this prompt from an excellent website, and I am taking their challenge and invite you to join me. Feel free to link to your post here in a post to their website as well if you want!

You can read all about the prompt at the link above, but the gist of it is to pick a theme or subject and write one part of a poem about it per day for five days. So today I'll write the first part, tomorrow the second part, and so on until I'm finished on November 8. To avoid confusion about where to find them, though, I will just continually edit my post to add the new section each day. Here goes.

I.

They make it look so easy.

I try and try

but every time

I can't make them

really hear me.

I know

what I want to say,

but when I open my mouth,

what comes out

is unexpected.

Just once

I'd love her to hear

what I say

and do exactly

what I asked.

Small wonder

I feel like screaming

at seemingly-random times.

How would you like it

if no one could hear you?

II.
Each morning
I retreat to the bathroom,
my stomach betraying
the nerves I try not to show.

My brain is under control.
I have nothing to fear
inside the classroom.
It’s outside it I dread.

People wonder why
I hide my face
behind the cover
of a dog-eared book.

When you’re afraid
of human nature,
literature is solace
in a cruel world.

III.

On my own for the first time,
I thought I’d be okay.
I knew who I was and where
I was going.

It only took a few blows--
my roommate’s abandonment,
an insincere relationship--
to shake my foundations.

How quickly I faltered
on promises I made myself.
I had become a person
I neither knew nor liked.

But blessings came
with new humility:
my truest friends
as well as my true love.

IV.
If someone told me
just five years ago
that I would be a runner,
I would have laughed.

Now I can’t go two days
without having a run;
it’s an indispensable part
of my daily routine.

While I started slow
and still am not fast,
I just keep putting
one foot in front of the other.

Nowadays,
I just cruise along
for miles and miles,
not even breathing hard.

V.
When I first found out
you were on your way,
I wondered if I would
be good enough for you.

See, I’m the youngest.
I only even baby-sat
one time, for my nieces.
Never changed a diaper.

But when I saw your face
for the first time,
all the doubt and fear
melted entirely away.

I knew that what I didn’t know
didn’t matter at all.
What I did know
was that I love you, forever.

I have to say, I wasn't sure quite where this poem would lead me but the journey turned out to be very rewarding. Where will it take you? C'mon, join me!!