day 7 - calendars

 here's day 7's poem in napowrimo2026! i couldn't quite land the (optional!) prompt, but we did our best. it all built off the first line, which i'd posted on bluesky as a reply to someone's sunday scaries.

 

day 7 - calendars

by tophie palmer 

the cruelty of calendars
comes around to haunt us again——
sunday scaries, monday drearies:
with the certainty of death,
even weekends must someday end——
to our daily planners we must tend.

oh, from the glorious freedom
of weekend joys and frabjous days,
our working week duties and chores
are a heavy weight—sagging so
and dragging so and nagging so,
but again to work we all must go…

i put on my tie and wonder again,
“am i really doing this? is today
another in that long row to follow?”
but without fail, out the door i go
to my smallness, the confinement,
my endless corporate consignment.

the free, queer joy of the weekend
drawn to its painful, boring close
by the milquetoast commonplace facts
of compliant straight-laced coworkers:
the weekend finds, on its last breath,
such a heterosexual death.
 

 

 

image by yeliao521 from Pixabay 

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