Farewell: December Writing Prompt Responses

This month’s writing prompt was Farewell. Here we showcase all the responses that were submitted.

Farwell prompt: Another year comes to a close. It’s a departure from all that has happened this year as we move into something new. Who are you saying goodbye to? Are you leaving part of yourself behind and stepping into the new year a different person?

Take Me To No Funeral

Take me to no funeral,
Not after the year I’ve had,
What has happened and passed,
Has all been bad.

When young life is,
Full of excitement and fun,
Filled with fulsome frolics,
Fairs and holidays in the sun.

But when your older the news gets dire and dreadful,
Plenty of hospitals, piles, pills, illness and demises,
And those needles, I’m running out,
Of spare skin and veins,
For them to jab away,
So take me to no funeral.

Take me anywhere else,
The shops, the races or the seaside,
But not to a funeral,
Inside a church that would,
Make me miserable.

Getting on and all your,
Best years are far behind,
In front looms that dark cloud,
That fills you with such fear,
I don’t want to be reminded.

Take me to no funeral,
I hardly knew her anyway,
A minute or so of chat once a week,
To pass the time away,
That’s all.

I don’t want to go to no funeral,
The mood I’m in,
I’ll only make it worse.
I want to run, jump, shout and swear,
Anything to forget about funerals.

I’ll not go, but if you insist,
And cajole and chide,
Then maybe I’ll stay outside,
And peep through the open door.

Take me to no funeral,
I have had enough of them,
To last me a lifetime,
They always bring me down.

They took me to a funeral,
Most insistently,
Dragged and carried me in,
The vicar wouldn’t begin,
Until I had taken my place,
inside my coffin.

by Simon Collinson (@simon_coll87859 X)

Protector

A weathered old oak tree,
standing in the woods,
and in this giant's shadow,
a small young dogwood.

Other trees were broken,
scattered all about,
but the dogwood stood,
so strong, tall and stout.

The old tree protected,
with it's mighty green girth,
this one little sapling,
growing in the earth.

The old oak was broken,
lightning struck, it seemed,
but still stood tall,
though it's face was scarred and seamed.

With the passing of this giant,
some would be sad,
but think, but for it, the life
the little dogwood would have never had.

by David Calhoun

I turn my lovers into broken clocks

They don’t understand I was raised in a cemetery by scheming skeletons and a docile keeper, never learning the socially acceptable art of staying dead. Spill me on a bottom and I will build a workshop on its rocks. Unstitching a chaos of red threads, frayed and knotted. A little rhythm in the inexorable snip, snip, snip. Broken clocks are left with the luxury of convincing themselves twice a day that they are functioning right. But they can’t make rules. The final dreams of what could have been are now carefully tucked between their minute hands and hour hands. My farewells are unorthodox — I leave no ex-lovers.

by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury (@TejaswineeRC X, @tejaswineeroychowdhury Insta)

Red Muffler

i. Your back — that lonely back I could trace stars on — is distant,
I am losing you. I am afraid I had already forgotten my way back,
I chase you beyond timeliness. I reach for you. A tug on your coat,
I wish I could tell you how your unsaid words devoured me whole.

ii. You adjust your muffler. A red muffler. You are so beautiful, love.

iii. I shall be perpetually living inside the moment where I had you.
A loose string from your muffler intertwines my finger, I’m happy.
In mundaneness, your presence is where I have been the most alive.

iv. You reside in my ribs. I love you. I do. I wish I had a better word
for my devotion. I wish I could bury my heart in your graveyard.

by Ghazal Azad (@odeonoud X)

New Beginnings

I could let this year go in a heartbeat.

The past three hundred and sixty-five days will be swept under the rug in my bedroom, the negligence of each thing I’ve been dying to forget seeping out from the dusty fibers, small reminders of the past.

I find that time likes to whisper in the dead of night

Farewell.

And there I am, grasping at each passing day, begging time to slow down, an excuse to savor my fading youth just a little longer. I’ve yet to experience a season of my life that doesn’t have claw marks on it, I hang on tightly to everything that’s ever happened to me.

Though the haunt of each new year has consumed me, so does the hunger for a new beginning, leaving a starving pit in my stomach. I will unbecome everything I have ever been and start over. You can find me on my hands and knees begging for January first to arrive quicker every December.

The people who have been added to my bad habit list, old lovers, a handful of friends, self doubt, my boring job, the heat of my southwestern homestead and my negative self inflictions.

I finally feel ready to move on from it all.

Farewell.

by Gracie Wong (@Graciespoems)

the prefrontal cortex develops at 25

Farewell childish notions 
and a farewell to rose tinted glasses 
I am five and twenty now, 
the prefrontal cortex all developed. 
does it mean January 7th, 2025 will be the last day
when I'll still love you blinded?
because January 8th, 2025
the glasses will come off. 
the cortex ready 
to put two and two together
and walk out 
of this fraud of love you have been feeding me

by anirbas qureshi (@sabrinaanwarqureshi)

Year ’24

This year of 24,
Come to share its farewell.
Twelve months of madness,
I’m a different kind of person.
That January me,
From the year of 23,
Couldn’t know the changes within.
More self-efficient than before,
New confidences found.
I’m a different kind of me,
Then I was in 23.
Growing in vocabulary,
Written word has bloomed.
One year older,
Opportunities I’ve seized.
Feeling evermore capable,
Than I have ever before.
Nothing can truly prepare me,
For the changes that would be.
Those injections that I had for years,
Are left within my past.
The numbers that would cause stress,
Slowly cleaning up their act.
A writer I continue to be,
I try to rhyme and improve.
This year of 24,
I’m pushing more and more,
Becoming better versions of me,
As pushing ever closer,
It’s the year of 25.

by Beth Butler (@eabwriting_ Insta)

A little winter

Some silences are only filled by
a farewell. The last of all the voices,
to be heard and felt. Then follows,
more of the dreaded silence.
Perhaps, for some a farewell is the only
memory of something beginning
and ending at the same time.

by Bushra Ali (@calm_pace)

They like it darker

The Department of Humans in the Afterlife hasn’t done anything to impress me. If there is such a thing. And knowing how secretive our government is, there probably is – they’re just keeping it from us. How curious that they haven’t capitalized on the idea that many people would sacrifice their daylight, their gas mileage, their laundry quarters to sit there, watching someone they loved on a projector, who was currently living in the afterlife.

Even if you’re unable to touch them or brush the hair off their forehead. You would still sit there, crying happy tears that dissolve into sad tears, because the pleasure of seeing them turns into the pain of not being able to hold them. Regardless, you would gladly sign here and here under terms and conditions to get to see this person’s face one more time. Not because we are gullible but because the loneliness is hard to do alone. We are addicted to the people we once knew. And we don’t like to see them go into the ether without us. Will someone be so kind as to die with me so I won’t have to go alone when it’s my turn?

There’s a book in which a girl dies and in that version of the afterlife, she pays a quarter to see what her family is doing through a pair of those binoculars you used to see at the top of high rises or piers. How clever can you get? The author has concocted an afterlife where all it takes is one business transaction to be able to see into the life you left. It’s not only impressive but believable, as it lines up with corporate greed agendas across the board.

And yet, here I am. No crazymangogirl to talk to. No warheadcrazy to talk to. The lightbulb of my life has dimmed twice for each time I grieved this year. And I sit here dimming myself, thinking to myself that I sure like to think dark thoughts, such as: whoever is in charge of the Department isn’t profit-hungry enough for my taste. I hope they are replaced soon by someone who can’t wait to open their services to the public, so I can line up to sit down and stare at my
friends in the afterlife, in some kind of ethereal silent film.

In one delusive moment, I try to imagine myself as head of the Department. And I can almost hear my conscience whispering in my ear, asking me how I’m able to sleep at night, taking people’s money and teasing them with pictures to a timeline they cannot get to. I take a breath when the guilt trip sets in, relief flooding my bones because I never know if I’m a good guy or a bad guy. Clearly, I’m unqualified for the position. Clearly, they will put someone in charge who doesn’t trip over guilt, who lives in dim quarters, someone who likes it darker than I do.

by Giovana Barreto (@crumble.lina Insta)

Farewell and Fate

Is it a forever farewell or a partial goodbye?
You wished me a happy birthday last year.
My mother baked me a cake.
This time, I was home alone,
And none of you even texted.

by Inner Monologue (@Inner__monologue__)

One Way Ticket 

by Caitlin Scally (@caitlinscally)

Farewell

I’ve been going, going, going
… am I gone?

Emotions hit like tidal waves
tsunami-like
clear sunny skies then
wooooosh

I recede
I recede
I’m underwater

My confidant
My muse
…will I ever see you again?
can it be in this lifetime, please?
can I see you when the sun succumbs to the moon at night?
sit on your lap
nestle in your arms
remember what it’s like to love again
just us

Instead, I long to dream of you
make a deal with the gods as I fall asleep at night
it’s the closest I can get to your arms

But even unconscious, I know better
in another realm, you still run
I try to get your attention but you look right past me

past me

the past me, with you
under the stars or sun
you glisten

and I wait
and I move
and I run
and I scream
and cry
and punch

Yet I still hold you in my chest
like a heartbeat with no rhythm

you stall
you disappoint

I clasp onto you
fists knotted, knuckles white
electrical cardioversion, I shock the heart
a heart for a heart, I plea, as I draw another card
bargaining
bargaining

I hear silence

I toss in the cards
I reset the deck

I let you go.

by Christina Gnozzo

Farewell to the middle days of December

We meet like clinking champagne glasses,
as the daylight rises into sparkling festive moons.
This time is ours to keep,
until the sharpness of reality resumes.
I’ll soon say ‘farewell’ to these middle days of December,
and the beauty of their rooms.
Our dreams are draped like chandeliers.
as a new year knocks and looms. 
For now I’ll stay here,
capture this moment in a jar,
pour another glass of red,
before the memory drifts too far. 
As sparkling moons fall to January daylight,
as they eventually always do,
these middle days will be ours to keep,
stored in the jar where all our memories meet. 

by Fenella Fox (@thefoxfiles Insta)

A Haiku to Ring in the New Year

With this kiss, I bid
you adieu in the hopes I
will never see you.

by Sanam Rahimizadeh

Farewell

It was goodbye
And I didn't realise
I didn't know it was the last time we'd ever meet
That there was farewell in your eyes
The way you looked at me then
Confused me
But then I realised
You were saying goodbye
Committing that moment to memory
But you never said a word to me

If I knew
Then maybe I too would
Say goodbye
And commit our last moment
To memory

by Samia Tarannum (@musingsbysamia)