windowpane

Dear windowpane,

how fortunate it is that you rhyme

with rain, and pain, and going insane,

and our love could not withstand the strain.

A desolate lover could not ask for any other

more convenient way to poetically say

that their heart is filled with pain

at the sound of a name

and their tears fall like rain

racing down a windowpane,

If pressed I could further guess

the types of phrases they might express

within their eloquent distress:

a ruptured vein, a rusted chain, a twisted game,

words they would not entertain,

their hope is drained, maimed, slain,

the memory is a bitter stain,

a broken bottle of champagne,

everything lost and nothing to gain,

all this time spent, all in vain,

may never learn to trust again,

and you’re the only one to blame,

why did you do it, please explain?

Should I keep going? There is more

I’ve only just unlatched the door,

I haven’t even mentioned feeling

like a broken train, or like they’re standing

in the wreckage of a shattered airplane,

or out love was something sacred,

but you made it profane or I wish

that I could get you off my brain.

There’s more where all that came from,

but I guess I will refrain, and instead

simply say, thank you, windowpane.

---

NaPoWriMo 2024 – Day 9: “Our prompt for today (optional, as always) takes its inspiration from Pablo Neruda, the Chilean-born poet and Nobel Prize Winner. While he is most famous in the English-speaking world for his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, he also wrote more than two hundred odes, and had a penchant for writing sometimes-long poems of appreciation for very common or mundane things. You can read English translations of “Ode to the Dictionary” at the bottom of this page, “Ode to My Socks” here, and “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” here. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own ode celebrating an everyday object.”