NaPoWriMo Quarantine Edition – Exercise 24

The box: a poem in parts.

Write a couple of lines for each section before moving on to the next. Form is completely open, and rhyme is permitted but not required.

1. You come home late at night. It’s been raining, it’s dark and you’re tired. You almost trip over something that’s been left just outside your door.
2. You peer at it. Describe it, including how big or small it is, what it’s made of, whether it’s wet or dry or …
3. Take it inside. Heavy? Light? Easy to move? Hard to budge? Awkward? Simple? What else are you holding/carrying/accompanied by?
4. Put it down inside. As you do, you injure yourself on it somehow. What, and how?
5. Something moves inside the box. Describe the sound and anything else related to the movement.
6. Someone in another part of the house calls to you, and you leave the room briefly. Where do you go, and what do you do?
7. You come back to the box. How long has passed? Something is different. What?
8. Go to the box, and look at it again. Describe it again, focusing on things you didn’t describe the first time. Include a smell.
9. Who might have sent this to you, and why?
10. Put your hand on the box, getting ready to open it. Include a detail about time, temperature, and an object from the room.
11. Who else might have sent it to you, and why?
12. Describe the box using three different similes. (This is you, putting off opening the box a little longer.)
13. It’s time. Open it. Describe how you do this.
14. It’s open. What happens next?