This month’s writing prompt was Rebirth. Here we showcase all the responses that were submitted.
Rebirth prompt: Seeking clarity or something shiny and new? Spring has sprung and with it comes growth. You can use this season for rebirth, to transform yourself into something new, to make changes where they are needed, and weed out the old.
A Long Distance
Someone told me that the human voice
carries faster than light
and though I know it’s a lie I love the idea
of speaking your name into the phone call
right before the fireworks lift
over the backs of Stockwell tower blocks
and, eyes closed, tell you
the kindest thing you ever said to me
was that I smelt so good.
We agree it’s a funny thing: fireworks
in the spring. I wake up early
and take a walk round the square
where they are cutting the grass,
trimming the trees,
while you are probably doing a little reading
before falling asleep.
by Jack Wright (@jackwwrights Insta)
Towards the Sun
Immobilised body,
Frozen heart.
Like Winter,
I am solemn.
A harbinger of sun,
Instant light rays,
Melting icicles,
I feel thawed out.
Blossoms and buds,
Awaking from slumber,
I’m timid at first,
Yet brightness draws me in.
Rebirth and reawakening,
The start of something new.
A new dawn rises,
As cold regrets scurry,
Leave the old in the past,
To let me live new life at last.
by Elizabeth Butler (@eabwriting_ Insta)
Communion Wafer
If you take MDMA on top of acid on top of mushrooms,
that’s called a Jedi flip.
No church-going type will tell you that.
They prefer to stay grounded
while gazing up at the ultimate Skywalker,
but God’s house is the perfect place to roll off your face—
Those hors d’oeuvres are eaten afterhours, of course.
Once polished pews empty out and the bell tolls like Poe in a pewter urn.
The church’s clocktower is the local focal point.
It’s blessed by but belittling the ceramic Mary, who’s peeling and praying, monochromatic in pow(d)er blue.
With Sunday school hours over,
the whole plot is impregnated with an eerie reverence,
the pavement painted too dark and thick a red
as though Jesus was drained here.
I sit off to the side,
at one of the seven picnic benches
I’ve never seen anybody in,
under a mighty tall bevy of pines as straight and
momentous as steeples.
It’s not until I look down that I know I’m higher than Heaven,
breaking bread with a tribe of carpenter ants—
that is, scratching off a shekel-size burn from my left arm
as an ivory offering to the little black family.
My immediate reaction is shame,
but it’s replaced by wonder when the father
mounts the skin disk on its back to bring to his children
a knot away, where they can munch, grateful,
another beautiful scab along the lines of intelligent design,
wriggling with the purpose to repurpose
my First Supper scraps as more a divine detrivore
than I ever realized before.
by Paige Johnson (@OutcastPress1 Insta/X)
From the caterpillar to a butterfly
The caterpillar said;
Look at the world in amaze
And let it gaze at you
In a gauge of wonder.
Of what you’ve
become in days.
From the caterpillar to a butterfly
It’s a long journey,
The splendor of the butterfly
Makes it worth the time,
And the world stares in bewilderment
As the butterfly marks its beauty.
The butterfly sighs in fulfillment
At having done It’s part right.
From the caterpillar to a butterfly
Is a beautiful journey of
Creation,
Of It’s beauty and of the joy
Imparted by the beauty,
The butterfly listened.
The butterfly said,
In this world of competence,
It’s hard to thrive,
But one day you will,
Just like me,
Live up to your destiny,
Be what you were made to be,
You will climb the hurdles through,
Stay whirling
with patience yet ambition.
For, you will thrive
Keep moving and
Do not stay stagnant,
Fate and destiny
will reward your
patience in its time.
You will cross fears
In your path towards victory,
Let it not subdue you
But unclearly vanish,
Let the presence of your problems
Not be established,
Be stronger than your fears,
The caterpillar listened.
by Parvathy Padmakumar (@parv.athypadmakumar Insta)
One door closes
The thud-click of
a closing door. Into the
stuffy oppressiveness of an
unscheduled meeting.
A redundant thought
flickers through my
blindsided mind - of a
window opening, an opportunity
widening.
by Heather Hutchinson
Art can never be dead,
It can stay dead for some.
Yet in the rebirth of art,
born are a million lives
who stay awake for the art.
by Bushra Ali (@calm_pace Insta)
Rebirth without your memories
Rebirth without your memories
Letting you go will never be easy
I pray for you every day
Letting you go will never be easy
I’ll write to you only on occasions
Take care of yourself in every season
Rebirth without your memories
Letting you go will never be easy
by Inner Monologue (@inner__monologue__ Insta)
WHEN THE DAY FINALLY CAME
I woke up and let my coffee grow cold
and I realized I did not care if you loved me
I feared this day would come abruptly
I thought I had more time before I’d explode
but I felt it then, the blooming trees
I woke up and let my coffee grow cold
and I realized I did not care if you loved me
I no longer felt the urge to scream or revolt
just loosed a breath, fell to skinned knees
took in the warmth of spring’s greeting breeze
I woke up and let my coffee grow cold
and I realized I did not care if you loved me
I feared this day would come abruptly
by Sav Noël Hoover (@savnoelpoetry Insta)
Healing Through The Cracks
Beneath concrete's weight,
Emerging through the crevices,
A dandelion's fate.
The wind tests my resolve,
Rain purifies my earth,
Sun rays nurture my stem,
In growth's tumultuous birth.
From a tiny seedling's core,
Safe haven now outgrown,
Evolving from old roots,
New pathways I've sown.
Each facet of my being,
Molding, exploring,
Every leaf a story,
In nature's quiet adoring.
As blooms defy what's foretold,
I too, despite the odds, unfold.
by Kayla Trusick (@kaylatrusick Insta)
As If
I announce that I am going to learn to cook
healthy but impossibly delicious meals;
as if my daughter isn’t happy with cheese on toast
or fish fingers and chips.
I say I will get my body back.
A pre-baby adolescence as I crawl towards middle age;
as if my body were stolen to begin with.
As if time and pregnancy
haven't pulled the joints out of shape.
I say I will keep the house tidier.
Get rid of this and that,
everything must go!
Rushing around to hide everything,
as if having things I can’t see
will make me better.
As if other people don’t have mountains
of rubbish and dust too.
I announce I will run marathons again.
My feet pounding from fear and fat
as if my poor body hasn’t suffered enough.
As if I will find the time to train
as easily as finding coins down the back of the sofa.
I say I will be more present,
stretch each moment into an eternity.
Learn to cut the strings from my stresses
as if they were balloons waiting to be set free.
As if deep breaths will pay the mortgage.
As if self improvement is more important that survival.
Everything will be better when I am reborn.
Remade; a new and better me.
As if I can't be happy with what I have.
As if I shouldn't grow old gracefully.
by Nico Deryn (@nico.deryn Insta)
Rebirth
I want to fall asleep and wake up whole,
Mend this heart and soothe my soul,
End the cycle of feeling low.
It's getting old.
Fractured bones, shattered home
I swear I tried hard to rewire
But still I ended up alone
No I’m sorry
today I cannot find time to get up
Or wash my face or go to work
I cannot eat or fill my cup
For so long I’ve prayed for rain
Showers to come and drown this pain
circle it right down the drain
Instead I drained you.
But when the night falls I’ll sleep
Holding hope that I’ll wake whole
Enough to call back mom
Or just to put on some clean clothes.
by Caitlin Scally (@caitlinscally Insta)
my skin has slipped like a landslide
in places where it was taut, my own Tera firma.
there are tectonic plates etched in shape of stretch marks that shifted in the seismic activity that was growing you
the centre of my earth
by Lily Rebecca
Rebirth
The space between my fingers I leave for you to pass through
A sigh, a breath
Wondering how I can be strong
As you change me from the inside out
by Síle Maguire (@silewithafada Insta)
Chrysalis
We fold our body in the shape of a casket and let our bones
shatter, drop it like a bag of stones into the ocean, and on the bottom,
where sunlight is filtered through the ancient fluorescent water,
it will blossom, like flamboyant coral reefs.
And like a flower that reaches out to its first sight of light,
raging through the soil and yearning for the heartbeat of the sky
to reflect the ambiguous tints of its petals, I can feel
my own becoming. I’m trembling under the weight
of change. I vomit all the life out of my guts and eat
my own decayed flesh like the eternal snake does, seeking
death, seeking birth. When is it time to stop digesting?
I need something, like a star (or maybe a bomb, they’re easy to confuse)
racing through the sky, to tell me. It’d be quite clear, even from where I stand.
In my place of humility I watched as the fox eats the rotten remnants of
a rabbit. I witnessed the burial of an old dog and how a couple years later,
a sapling sprouted on that exact spot. I went down to the shore and the same
tide as last year pushed and pulled shells into and out of its grasp.
The world had been constant, and she had remembered me.
It hasn't come. The star (the bomb). And it probably won’t. Ever.
I’ll have to continue transforming, like always, like time doesn’t stop,
and it doesn’t stop. Not for us. Not when we keep on dying,
dying, dying, and each time
end
in a glorious rebirth.
by Noor Beliën (@writtenbynoorr Insta)
Womanhood, Rebirth & the
Evolutionary Paradox
Of Our Becoming
Sometimes, a woman’s growth
isn’t found in forging forwards.
It’s found in the
unravelling and
unlearning; the
re-parenting of younger days;
in the revisiting, in womanhood,
of the girls we used to be -
when we’d walk
barefoot
through the wildflowers
and have nothing else to be;
when rest didn’t feel like the
thief of our own worth;
when the programming of womanhood
had not yet made us feel -
that our body need be any more
than a vehicle with which to love;
that our body need be any more
than ours, and ours, alone;
that our body need be handed over
to any place it isn’t holy -
to any place it isn’t seen
as sacred ground
on which to
stand.
Sometimes, a woman’s growth
isn’t found in forging forwards.
It’s in the recollection of a time
when our true value
felt far clearer.
It’s in the
rewinding to
remind ourselves of
the girls that we once were.
It’s in the remembering of all the things
that we knew intuitively to be true
before the learning of the lies
that slowly stifled our
self-worth.
Sometimes, a woman’s growth
feels not like forging forwards,
rather -
her remembering
her revisiting
her rebirth,
Itself.
by Megs Hegdekar (@megshegdekar Insta)
swim press 