I charged into the heart of darkness, Madison at 2:00 a.m.,
so ominous the way it looked like anywhere else, maybe
even another Honolulu in the hot wee sweltering summer hours
after a death-gripped steering wheel drive from Oakland,
my mission, my intended hope, to earn a Ph.D. in English –
and to fall in love, although I’d find I wanted this more
than the degree, needed it to stop the slow drain of energy to study,
my brain running on empty, that relationship haunting me for two years –
I would learn this the hard way, barely breathing there,
that smell of Oscar Meyer, and the ghost of Otis Redding,
sitting by Lake Monona, watching the University of Wisconsin
across the water, love not coming in to bolster my dying desire
to read or write, haunted constantly by what I’d lost in Hawai‘i,
any serious academic ardor fading farther with each romantic undertaking.
* * * * *
Aloha #WriterFriday, I hope you are well and ready for the weekend. Today’s #WritingPrompt is
journey
Use it to inspire a piece of writing of any kind and of any length, and then post that piece on your site and link back to me, or simply leave it as a comment below. I would love to read it : )
Lanning Lee 