January 2026 So Farrr...

I don’t know how to write. I don’t know where to write, what to write about, or where to start. So I’ll start from that ignorance.

The year began with sickness. Fever, cold, cough, delirium, nausea, no appetite. A strange pain returned in the middle of my chest... the same one that had disappeared just before the new year, like it was waiting politely for January to arrive before making a comeback. Today I finally feel better. Not fully, there’s still the cough, and the chest pain keeps peeking out like it wants attention. And as if that wasn’t enough, a weird pain showed up in my left toe today. Truly impressive. The body has range.

Ugh. Anyway. Sickness brings with it a lot of enforced stillness, and with stillness comes daydreaming. Endless, foggy, indulgent daydreams. I’ve moved on from the previous phase into a new one: new scenarios, new futures, new versions of myself. But as the sickness fades, so does the fog. And as it lifts, guilt walks in like it owns the place.

Guilt about not doing enough. Politically. Morally. Historically. As if I owe the world a revolution and keep missing the deadline. The daydreams didn’t help. They escalated quickly into fantasies of changing everything, of reorganizing the world from the inside out. Very efficient. Very imaginary.

Some lines came out of those dreams. I stored them away carefully, telling myself I’d write them down when I had the energy. I’ve been chasing them softly since then, afraid they’ll vanish if I don’t catch them soon as I procrastinated writing until now. Thank goodness.

The premise was this: I had already left the country. Left my family behind. I returned, but hadn’t yet reached my hometown. And this is what came to me: 

Coming back to my country feels like going back home. The government interrogates me the way my father did. The house dominates the way the state does. Talking to officers-in-charge makes me feel seven years old again, my father’s screams replaying as prosecution. Everywhere I go in this country feels like those days when I ran freely inside a house I was trapped in, locked in, while my father was in another city, another state altogether. The worst part is this: I cannot wait to leave the country again, and I haven’t even gone back home yet.

The world, meanwhile, has not gotten better. If anything, it seems committed to getting worse with impressive consistency. Sickness keeps increasing; bodies keeps failing; systems keep rotting; oppressors keep oppressing. The erasure of Gaza has not stopped. The settler-colonial project marches on, knee-deep in blood and paperwork, methodically erasing Palestinians while their investors facilitate and fund it by calling it policy, security, inevitability. Iranian women took to the streets at the turn of the year; old year to new year, hope to hope; and now there is a brutal internet blackout. Silence is the best strategy of oppressors. People are being massacred while the world refreshes its feeds and finds nothing loading. My own country isn’t doing well either. The state feels unwell, like a body ignoring its symptoms. Water has suddenly become poisonous. Air quality remains debilitating, just like last year, lungs working overtime for the privilege of existing. Women are still being raped. Rapists are still out on bail. And the political prisoner I once mentioned on my blog? He did not get bail. Of course he didn’t. The system knows exactly who deserves mercy and who deserves demonstration. 

Some days it feels obscene to write about my chest pain or my toe when entire populations are being suffocated slowly, officially, legally. Other days it feels obscene not to write, as if silence is collaboration. I don’t know which day this is. January hasn’t clarified that yet.

I hope to all the prisoners trying to break open the cage, it flings open, not gently, not ceremonially, but violently enough to never be rebuilt the same way again. I hope to all the people on the streets with fire in their hands and sparkles of hope in their hearts, it lights open their country, not as spectacle, not as martyrdom, but as a slow, irreversible dawn. I hope to all the colonized fighting to dismantle the settlements, it collapses from the inside, their oppressive walls forgetting why they were built, apartheid borders losing their language, maps finally embarrassed by their own lies. I hope this year does not demand heroism from exhausted bodies. I hope it allows endurance to count. I hope staying alive remains a political act. For them, I have written this:

From oppressed hearts, sparks of hope arise,
igniting fires against the engines of domination.
They pierce the world’s long night,
calling forth justice, calling forth dawn.
Forged through struggle, they shape a more humane tomorrow,
voices joining as one, as an unbreakable chorus,
shattering the chains of tyranny,
proving that no darkness can silence
the human spirit’s relentless pursuit of liberty.

I hope to myself, quietly, without announcement. I hope I survive the guilt without surrendering the anger. I hope caring does not become a liability. I hope rest is not mistaken for defeat. I hope I, too, one day, maybe this year, break open my prison cage and thrust my body back into life and the world, clumsy and unprepared and alive anyway. I hope I, too, one day, maybe this year, take the fire in my heart and burn this house of fears instead, and run along the sweet streets of life with light and stardust in my palms, reckless with joy, irresponsible with hope. I hope I, too, one day, maybe this year, break this inheritance of silence, this generational choreography of shrinking, this traditional habit of apologizing for existing too loudly or wanting too much. I hope I stop confusing survival with waiting. I hope I stop mistaking endurance for arrival. I hope I learn that softness is not the opposite of strength as it is often the source. I don’t want to be exceptional. I don’t want to be heroic. I just want to be here, fully, loudly, without asking permission. Maybe that is the revolution my body can afford this year. Maybe that will have to be enough.

For now, this is all I can offer with hope, unfinished, unguaranteed, but still breathing.

- Oizys.

Jan 02, 2026: Will the world offer itself to me, Kafka?

The morning started with some more ruminatory daydreaming. Stuffing myself full of other people’s talents until it felt less like inspiration and more like bingeing, scrolling, absorbing, hoarding brilliance that wasn’t mine to metabolize. My imagination couldn’t digest it. It curdled. What came back up wasn’t admiration anymore but a sour mix of anxiety, insecurity, a softer and sadder kind of jealousy that doesn’t want to steal, just wants to understand why it never became. Regrets also tagged along, uninvited but very familiar, reminding me of all the timelines I ghosted. I lay there overstimulated and undercommitted, feeling both expanded and hollow, like I had traveled everywhere I was not allowed to, without ever leaving the bed. The day had not even asked anything of me yet, and I was already exhausted from rehearsing lives I don’t live. I came across a few words of Franz Kafka that made me want to start writing this morning:

It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.

- Number One Hundred and Nine from Zürau Aphorisms, translated by Michael Cisco¹

The words did not feel motivational, but quietly accusatory, so I feel like my act of writing is an act of defense. Like they were asking why I keep mistaking motion for access, why I believe arrival requires spectacle. Which felt weirdly familiar because Kafka's words have never provided me momentum. Rather, I have always felt as if he is providing me permission to stop pretending that effort should always look productive. Be still, he says. Do not even look for a shortcut, or a hack. But, that's also the part that unsettles me the most. Because, more often than not, stillness feels less like peace and more like risk, like "तूफान से पहले की शांति" (Toofan se pehele ki shaanti - Calm before the storm). There is no scrolling to buffer the discomfort, there is no work to hide-behind, there is no imagined future-self to rehearse. Just the raw fact of myself being here, completely unmasked before anything else can be. 

I do not know if the world will writhe before me in ecstasy. Will the world writhe before me, Kafka? I do not know. This feels quite dramatic, and even suspicious, Kafka. But maybe writing doesn't begin with brilliance or discipline or having something worth saying. For some, it begins when they think. For some, when they open their lips. For some, when they twirl their pens in their hands. I think, nowadays, for me, writing begins when I stop outsourcing my attention. When I sit long enough for the noise to thin and whatever’s been circling quietly finally gets impatient. This morning, at least, I stayed. That felt like something.

- Oizys.

¹ Cisco has given commentaries in his book and reading the commentary No. 109's Aphorism felt like someone switching on the harsh light after a long, indulgent dusk. Not in a clarifying manner, more like someone sharpening the unease. What stayed with me is this idea that belief isn’t optional and that skepticism doesn’t float free of faith but squats inside it, often disguised as refusal in some people. So, even the posture of “nothing satisfies my idea of truth” is already a value system clearing its throat. Hence, there is no neutral ground. We are always standing somewhere, even when we insist we’re hovering or just spectating. I keep circling his phrase prescriptive madness with the red marker of my mind's rumination. Belief as something donkey-stubborn, almost embarrassing in its insistence. Not elegant, not defensible, just chosen and held. That lands uncomfortably close to writing (and like something else too, guess what...?). To sit and wait, as Kafka suggests, isn’t passive but a kind of sanctioned madness for refusal to chase events with the decision to affirm that stillness will yield something, even when there’s no proof it will. Especially then. Further, Cisco’s reading of the world (not as illusion!) but as desiring entity unsettles me more than the Buddhist version ever did (as much as I know of). The idea that the world wants something, anything from me, not metaphorically, not sentimentally, but actively, but proactively, the idea swells me. That when I stop moving, stop distracting myself, it doesn’t dissolve; it advances. Strips. I do not think the writhe is going to transcend here. Maybe, it will insist? Or, demand? The world trying to win me back from my own withdrawal unconsentingly. That makes the stillness feel less safe, less holy. More exposed. So, that’s why I avoid it. Because if the world really does exist like that... wanting, pressing, writhing. offering itself; then my inertia isn’t neutral anymore. It’s actively and proactively evasive. My endless preparation for starting something, my rehearsals, my daydreams of becoming are ways of not standing still long enough for the encounter to happen. Beckett understood this, apparently. Reduce the stage until what remains has no choice but to speak; no spectacle, no lineage, no backstory to hide behind. Just attention as an act of faith, crude and irrational and embarrassingly sincere. Kafka recoiling from his own aphorism makes sense to me. There’s something dangerous about saying the world will come to you if you stop. It comes and it removes all the excuses. It suggests that maybe nothing is missing except the courage to be still and accept whatever shows up... desire, boredom, accusation, embarrassment, failure, or nothing at all. And maybe that’s the risk I keep postponing. Not failure. Not inadequacy. But belief, in its most unpolished, donkey-like form.

Dec 31, 2025 – Jan 01, 2026: Nobody Is Here. Happy New Year.

“Nobody Is Here.” Is the chant I chant I have been chanting. It keeps looping, not loud enough to be prayer, not honest enough to be a lie. Things have been happening and I have been wondering where has my zeal for writing gone? I tell myself I am resting, but it feels more like I have misplaced the part of me that initiates things. The page waits without judging, which somehow makes it worse. I open notebooks like I am checking empty rooms, expecting evidence of a break-in, or at least a note saying I stepped out to live. Instead, there is this static ambition, wanting to be precise and infinite at the same time, paralyzing me into doing nothing particularly well. I keep procrastinating while my words are swallowed by the black hole of wanting nothingness and craving the mastery of everything while sewing useless crafts of daydreams. I keep stitching together elaborate inner monologues that never make it past rehearsal, practicing brilliance for an audience that does not exist. It is not that I have nothing to say. It is that saying it would collapse the illusion that I am still preparing. 

I wake up new dreams from the corners of my mind to give them false hope, dress them up like they are going somewhere important, then feed them to the private circus in my head. This dance form, that music form, this job, that protest... each one flashes like a tab I will definitely return to. I try them on for size, admire the version of me who commits, then hang them back up untouched. It is easier to fantasize about momentum than to endure the friction of starting. I confuse curiosity with purpose, stimulation with direction. Somewhere between wanting everything and refusing the cost of choosing, I stall... hovering... entertained and unsatisfied, telling myself this too is a phase, as if naming it makes it temporary.

But there is always that undertow. The quiet probe that starts the moment the fantasy gets comfortable. I do not know enough. I do not know anything. I did not start early enough. I do not have the right origin story. I do not have the clean lineage. I do not have the cinematic struggle that justifies late arrival. I picture myself stepping into those imagined lives and feel immediately overexposed, like I skipped the prologue everyone else memorized but I egotistically assumed only I knew it and no one else. The daydreams try to keep going, but they thin out, go translucent. A needle of insecurity pricks them.. soft pop, after soft pop... until the air is full of nothing but realization. I notice the gaps in my knowledge, the absence of mentors, the way I never quite learned how to belong without performing. Even in my own head, I am an impostor with good intentions. The wind shifts, the circus tents sag, and I am left holding the poles, pretending this was always meant to be a temporary installation.

And I am left with this heavy aftertaste of inertia. Like I have already failed at things I never even attempted. A fear settles in that I won’t do anything, ever... just keep orbiting intentions like they are planets I am not cleared to land on. Sometimes absurd thoughts slip in: when I go out and meet people, can I list daydreaming about hobbies as a hobby itself? Can I present potential as a skill, aspiration as evidence of effort? What are some of the answers that I can rehearse that will sound convincing until they are spoken aloud. And then there’s the worse possibility: the one I don’t joke about. What if I meet people who actually live inside those fantasies? People who are the dancers, the musicians, the organizers, the protesters. What if they watch the mask loosen in real time, see the lag between my language and my life. I imagine the moment of recognition, that polite recalibration in their eyes, and I shrink back into myself, cataloging yet another reason to stay unreal, where at least the performance never has to survive contact with the world.

Hmm. And that’s when the calendar starts to feel accusatory. Because the brand new year arrives, right on schedule, indifferent to all of this. When time itself joins the interrogation. As if the year has been quietly keeping score while I have been rehearsing. I do not arrive at New Year’s Eve hopeful... no. I arrive already defensive, already bracing, already tired of explaining myself to an abstract future that keeps asking what I did with the last one.

So, the new year night is here. The night you think will change everything but you know it does nothing. It has no magic dust. Only remains of firecrackers. The air smells like burnt impatience and borrowed optimism. Everyone is counting down like numbers have ever been responsible for transformation. I stand there pretending to witness a threshold, when really it’s just another seam in time, badly stitched. I make promises the way people leave glasses of water by the bed... a bit symbolic, but mostly untouched. Somewhere a cheer erupts, but it feels prerecorded, like a laugh track for survival. And, this year, like all the previous years, I don’t feel reborn. Earlier, I used to feel briefly paused, like life buffering while deciding whether to resume at the same volume. Now, that feeling has faded too. Still, I stay up. Still, I watch the clock. As if attention alone might convince tomorrow to be different.

Anyway, nobody is here. Anyway, nobody is here. And if someone happens to be reading this by accident: happy new year.

- Oizys.

Another Sunday

Another Sunday. It started with hope but the hope was crushed by crankiness. Had planned yesterday to go to the book fair with my sister and my mother. It is ruined. Plans were cancelled. I sat with that disappointment longer than I expected with not the dramatic kind, not tears, not slammed doors, but just a dull, nagging weight, like a bookmark pressed into the wrong page. I had already imagined the smell of new paper, the smell of old books, random inscriptions on those books and imagining their stories, the quiet thrill of browsing without urgency taking all the time, the small debates over which book was “worth it.” I laughed a bit because it is funny how the mind travels ahead and furnishes a future that reality later evicts without notice. The house felt louder after the plan died with the deafening silence of presence. Everyone moved around with their own irritation, bumping into each other’s moods like badly parked cars. I tried to be mature about it with Sunday wisdom and all of that but crankiness is contagious and it spreads faster than optimism ever does. I told myself: this is trivial. People have worse Sundays. People have no Sundays at all. And yet, the heart doesn’t respond to logic memos. It sulks. It wanted that book fair. So I did what I always do when plans collapse: I shrank the day with no grand expectations, no big emotions, no big plans, nothing. I drank tea and scrolled aimlessly. I read a few pages of a book I already own, one I keep postponing like an uncomfortable conversation. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Haha again. By evening, the disappointment softened, not healed though just… less sharp. I realized the day wasn’t ruined, only different. That’s a distinction experience teaches you, usually after many badly handled Sundays. The usual rosy glasses tradition says Sundays are for family and plans and lightness. My familial reality says Sundays are mirrors where they show you how you deal when nothing goes your way. And, today, I dealt imperfectly. I was sulky, irritable, withdrawn, a little dramatic in my head. But I stayed. I didn’t explode or run away [can I even at this point?]. That has to count for something, right? Tomorrow will come, as it always does, aggressively punctual, very Monday-like. The book fair will exist without me today. Maybe another time. For now, I’ll close this Sunday the way it deserves to be closed with no triumph, no despair, just neutrality towards hitting rock-bottom like a ricochet every time life hits me with known uncertainty. And maybe that’s enough. I hope.

- Oizys.

An Update on Life, Failures, and Here-and-There

As you can notice, I have successfully abandoned my beautifully crafted, loaded-with-hopes NovPoWriMo project with the help of failure just after one week. Yes, and you know what? I am not even going to backhandedly revive it by turning one night into crazy and overload myself with too many metaphors to have a poetrorrhea and mass-post backdatedly. So, I am just gonna let it create its own grave in my museum of failures.

Anyway, life has been... life-ly. Not lively!

I am soaking my mind in the poetics of Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, and of course English. Learning the nitty-gritties, the history, the style, the cross-connected meanings, etc. Letting each language tug me into its own rhythm, its own architecture of longing and breath. Each language opens a door into a slightly different version of me, a different pulse. I am learning how metaphors migrate, how grief changes shape from script to script, how love rearranges itself depending on the grammar it sits in. Some days I feel like a vessel being rewired; other days like a child relearning how to name the world. Each language carries its own temperature, its own memory, its own way of holding a wound. I’m letting all of them seep in (slowly, stubbornly) until they begin to braid themselves inside me.

On Sunday, I woke up around 8 a.m., then drifted back to sleep. Regretfully, I was woken by a lucid daymare. In it, I saw a series of vignettes: I had just woken up to discover that people had found out about my blog, and my sister had texted me saying she had opened some pages from my blog for an interview. The next vignette cut to her giving a news interview about my blog. The vignettes are slowly fading, but after I finally woke up, I spent a few hours trying to make sense of them. For a moment, I even thought it was all real. It wasn’t, at least, I hope not. I tried to ruminate, but the thoughts slipped away as the vignettes continued to disappear, like a dream dissolving before I could fully grasp it. Oh, the horror... if this hurled-up, vomit-stained mess of emotions were ever unmasked to the world I know. The thought alone coils in my stomach, equal parts panic and shame, as if someone might peel back the skin of privacy and parade the chaos beneath it.

Pain has become devoid of pain. It doesn't have the lazzat-e-girriya effect anymore in it. It lingers still in crooks and corners of my soul. But. I wonder about it a lot. I wonder about it a lot. I don't get sad like I used to. Like nails uprooted after scratching the rock bottom trying to write a prayer that is not prayer to a god that is not god. I have been working on multiple projects, papers, and I have my meagre social justice job. But the desperation is devoid of desperation. It doesn't have that catastrophic urgency anymore. I think about it a lot. I don't spiral like I used to. Like the mind used to split itself into thin, trembling threads and tie every loose end of my life into nooses.

Now it just… pauses.

Maybe it is age coupled with exhaustion, or it is the quiet uncelebrated work of healing, you know, the kind that doesn’t announce itself with trumpets but arrives like a guest who didn’t knock, just slipped in through the kitchen door and started making tea. I do think about the days when there was the old sharpness of longing with that feverish, foolish belief that destruction is a kind of art form. Now everything is softer, dull-edged, almost bureaucratic in its sadness, like a societally approved melancholy that is romanticized, the kind that pops up when you fill out forms, stand in queues, and make beautiful, aesthetic reels about it. I write, still (please let this be the proof of this statement). In fragments, in stolen ten-minute pockets between work emails and existential sighs. Some of it is ugly, some of it is startling, some of it is just me talking to my past selves like a group chat that refuses to mute. And through all this, life keeps happening in its strangely indifferent way... the tea gets cold, the laundry demands diplomacy, the moon refuses to mind its own business.

But somewhere in me, a small voice, the one that survived all the museum-of-failures exhibitions, has started saying: “We’re still here. We’re still trying. And, guess trying counts.”

So this is the update: I am unfinished. I am uneven. I am learning and unlearning and mislearning. I am losing track of my own projects and still pretending it’s all part of the grand artistic plan. I am alive in that half-feral, half-domesticated way that all people with too many thoughts and too little time tend to be. And in this slow, uneven season, I’m learning that surviving is no performance but an ordinary whisper of the hand resting quietly on the edge of the day, like it is the permission to not be extraordinary. Sometimes, that’s where hope hides. Maybe the truth is that life never straightens out. It just spirals differently, in wider circles, gentler curves, fewer sharp turns. And maybe the point isn’t to escape the spiral at all, but to walk it with a little more grace, a little less frenzy, and a little curiosity about where it leads next. And maybe one day I’ll walk back into that graveyard of abandoned projects, brush the dust off a headstone, and feel a pulse under it. Not a resurrection, but just a reminder that even failed things try to live. So yes... this is the state of the union of my chaotic little universe. No fireworks, no epiphanies, no triumphant “I have healed!” banner. Just a person updating her life like a glitchy software patch with minor fixes, unresolved bugs, performance issues. But hey! It’s still running. Until then, I’ll keep moving. A little crooked. A little lost. But moving nonetheless.

So I’ll keep at it... writing, overthinking, accidentally ghosting my own goals. The usual. At least this time, I’m doing it with better metaphors and slightly fewer breakdowns (I do miss the broken-reset effect it had). Call that growth. Or delusion. Same difference. And honestly? That feels… enough for now.

~ Oizys.

NovPoWriMo 2025: Day 7 — Marginalia Poetry

DAY 7. Marginalia Poetry

Marginalia are the notes, arrows, grumbles, doodles, and side-whispers readers leave in the edges of a text. In medieval manuscripts, scribes glossed, quibbled, even sketched snails doing battle in the borders while scripture marched down the center; the margins became a parallel drama. Later readers think Coleridge’s dense annotations, David Foster Wallace’s hyperactive underlinings, classroom copies with five owners turned books into conversations layered over time. Billy Collins’s poem “Marginalia” catalogs this readerly graffiti; entire editions of “author’s marginalia” exist because the commentary sometimes outlives the text. And, there are some great, genuinely “underground” cases where the main text is prose and the poetry lives in the margins (or rides the edges of a prose book):

– “Pangur Bán” (9th c.): A short Old Irish poem written by a monk about his cat, copied into the margin of a Latin primer (the Reichenau Primer). The prose core is devotional/educational Latin; the lyric lives in the edge space. It is a classic proof-of-concept for marginal poetry.

– “The Blackbird of Belfast Lough / Loch Laíg” (early Irish): Another tiny Old Irish lyric scribbled as marginal verse by a scribe taking a break from copying ecclesiastical prose. It is frequently cited as an example of Irish marginal nature-poems alongside Pangur.

– Tom Phillips’s A Humument (1966–2016): Phillips “treated” a Victorian prose novel (A Human Document) by painting, collaging, and extracting poem-lines in little islands and margins of the page. The original prose remains the substrate; the poetry is literally carved into the borders/whitespace. It’s the modern, maximal version of marginal lyric.

– Here's a near-inverse for context (useful as a counterpoint in our Day 7). Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817 ed.) where the center is verse and the margins carry a prose gloss (so, flipped), but it’s a powerful example of how margins become a second voice/story. Handy while we understand why margins have such poetic charge.

And of course, the cult novel S. (2013), conceived by J.J. Abrams and written by Doug Dorst, takes the idea of marginalia to its limit: the book itself is layered with two readers’ handwritten notes in the margins, postcards, maps, and slips of paper, so the story is told as much in the scribbles as in the “main text.” There are stranger rabbit holes too:

– The Voynich Manuscript (15th c.), an undeciphered book covered not just in mysterious text and drawings but with later readers’ puzzled notes trying to crack it.
– Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), a Renaissance dream-book where marginal glosses sometimes contradict the text and scholars suspect secret authorship games.
– The “Dartmouth Dante” copies from the 19th c., where anonymous students scrawled jokes, prayers, and insults in Latin beside their assigned cantos.
– And the Ars Notoria, a medieval grimoire, often copied with cramped side-notes that supposedly gave the scribe magical power if read aloud.

Why are we doing this? Because the margin is where thinking shows its work. It’s where the raw voice: contradictions, edits, hesitations; escapes the clean surface. A marginalia poem lets your poem be the commentary: restless, argumentative, alive. It also echoes your Week 1 themes (palimpsests, errata/corrigenda): we’re writing next to a text, not erasing it, by layering, correcting, complicating.

How can we do this?
Take a short passage (a paragraph from a book/article, a past poem of yours, even your own Day 1–6 lines). Copy it plainly as “main text.” Now write only in the margins: side notes, arrows, strike-throughs, caret insertions, contradictions, tiny glosses. The poem is the marginalia; the “main text” remains as ghost or foil.
– Minimum 8 lines of marginal notes.
– Include at least one “angry correction” (e.g., no—this isn’t it).
– Include at least one doodle-word (onomatopoeia, glyph, or nonsense syllable).
– End with a note-to-self (a private instruction or reminder).

Optional intensifiers (choose one or more):

• Let one margin note spill into (overwrite) the main text.
• Use editing marks (→ ↑ ↓ ^) and a visible strike-through.
• Make the marginalia argue with the central passage’s thesis.
• Write the whole thing as if you’re grading in red pen (brief rubrics, “awk,” “clarify”).
• Add one footnote number and a single-line footnote at the end (a sly reveal).

Micro-samples [Use as a feel-check or a template!]

(Main text:) The leaves fell in silence across the field.
[marginalia:] silence? — it was never quiet
[↑ add] the crows, the rust in their throats
strike “field” → write “vacant lot”
!!! autumn is not your metaphor; it is your mess
(why pretend the fence wasn’t there?)
[nnngh] skrr—skrr—(rake teeth on gravel)
^ move “fell” later; let them hover first
no, not “gold”—tobacco, old envelope, bruise-edge
[note to self:] remember: you were there too.

(Main text:) I meant to say I was fine.
[marginalia:] you meant to say—different from meaning it
→ insert: after the bus left
delete “fine”; set “functional”
(angry correction) stop tidying the wreckage
[scribble] o o o o (beads you kept worrying)
footnote¹

¹ you did not call back; that is the whole weather.

Food for thought for all of us: In the modern era, especially during the heyday of long-form blogging, comments, pingbacks, trackbacks, threaded replies — weren’t they a kind of digital marginalia? A chorus scribbled in the edges of a main post? Could those count as part of this lineage of poems-in-the-margins? You could argue yes: blog comments, pingbacks, even forum threads are marginalia. They’re written in the “edges” of a main text, they talk back, they annotate, they contradict, sometimes they even outlive the original post. They’re lateral voices, just like medieval glosses. In some ways, blog comment threads are the 21st-century equivalent of the scribe’s doodle or gloss — a palimpsest of readers layering over the original. But you could also argue no: online comments aren’t literally sharing the same physical margin; they’re architecturally separated (below the post, or on a different page). They’re “paratext” rather than “marginalia.” And unlike scribal marginalia, which usually had one reader at a time, internet commentary is multi-voiced, asynchronous, often cacophonous. And... unlike medieval ink, blog comments are fragile: platforms collapse, links rot, archives disappear. Maybe the internet’s margins are even more ghostly than parchment. So it comes down to definition:

If marginalia means “any writing in conversation with a main text,” then yes, digital comments and pingbacks fit neatly.
If it means “literally inscribed in the physical white space around a text,” then no, the analogy only works metaphorically. 

And honestly, that tension — between metaphorical lineage and material practice — is exactly the kind of ambiguity poetry thrives on. What would it mean to write a poem in the comment box itself? To let the margin become the poem, and the post the silent backdrop? And what about now, in the age of fleeting tweets and DMs? Maybe our marginalia aren't even in the margins anymore, maybe they're the whole page?

Marginalia Poetry

I opened the window to let the morning in.

Marginalia:
→ add: it hesitated, like it knew better
no — not “morning,”
   ~morning~ → uninvited memory
↑ this is where the draft pretends it’s gentle
(angry correction) stop romanticizing the ache
scribble: skrrt-skrrt (wingbeats / nerves)
^ move “opened” later; you only thought you did
question?? did you close it afterward
why does light always feel like an audit
o o o (three hollow suns, mocking)
→ insert: the birds weren’t singing — they were warning
you should say it plainly: you weren’t ready¹
[note to self:] next time, lie slower.

¹ yes, you kept the curtains drawn after.

~ Oizys.

NovPoWriMo 2025: Day 6 — Misheard Prayers

DAY 6. Misheard Prayers

The term mondegreen was coined by writer Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Harper’s essay. As a child, she misheard the ballad line:

“They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray / And laid him on the green”

as

“They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray / And Lady Mondegreen.”

Hence: mondegreen.

Mondegreens thrive in oral tradition because transmission depends on ear not eye. They blur memory and imagination — the listener becomes a co-writer. Mishearing is often where oral tradition generates variation; texts survive through their errors. Why are we doing this? Mishearing creates poetry. Think of mondegreens (misheard song lyrics) or prayers recited by rote until the words blur. When you mis-hear, the language mutates: “deliver us from evil” becomes “deliver us some eels.” In the 1971 movie Carnal Knowledge, some mondegreens appear like "Round John Virgin" (instead of "'Round yon virgin...") and "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" (instead of "Gladly the cross I'd bear"). They permeated into pop songs too like Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze: “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy” (for “kiss the sky”); Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bad Moon Rising: “There’s a bathroom on the right” (for “bad moon on the rise”); or Elton John, Tiny Dancer: “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” which became a popular meme because of a humorous scene in the show Friends where Courteney Cox's character sings the misheard lyric. Alice Oswald’s Memorial and Caroline Bergvall’s Drift have leaned on mishearings, chants, and fragments as raw material. This prompt taps into the slippage between what’s said and what’s heard [What your ear makes up can be more charged than what the lyricist wrote.]. Or, something related... Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sprung rhythms often cause readers to “hear” multiple possible versions at once: half deliberate mondegreens? A mondegreen reminds us that sense is never purely semantic: it’s also sonic, embodied, fallible. The defamiliarization of it where suddenly, language isn’t fixed; it wriggles under us. But, at the same time, the communal memory of it where shared mishearing becomes folklore.

Gavin Edwards has a collection of essays on the subject in this blog, which includes a link to his Mondegreen Hall of Fame. Jon Carroll’s “I’m Not Blue, I’m Mondegreen” is a column in the San Francisco Chronicle from June 1996, where he collects funny mondegreens from readers. And, “The Bright Elusive Mondegreen of Love” is another SF Chronicle column of Carroll (April 1997) with canonical examples and anecdotes.

Another something even more related is an eggcorn. An eggcorn happens when someone mishears or misunderstands a word or phrase. They then replace it with a similar-sounding phrase that makes sense in the given context, even though it's incorrect. Examples: "egg-corn" for "acorn"; "old-timers' disease" for "Alzheimer's disease"; "for all intensive purposes" for "for all intents and purposes". The "Eggcorn Database" refers to a website founded by linguists on the Language Log blog where users can submit and view linguistic slips called eggcorns. An eggcorn is a misheard or reinterpreted word or phrase that creates a new, logically plausible, yet incorrect phrase (e.g., using "egg-corn" instead of "acorn"). These errors are not just simple misspellings but attempts to make sense of unfamiliar words based on one's existing vocabulary, often with humorous and creative results. 

How can we do this?

• Pick a text you know by heart (a prayer, hymn, pledge, chant, song lyric, family saying).
• Write it out as you mishear it. Don’t correct spelling; let phonetics drive the line.
• Break into 10–15 short lines, enjambed.
• Let at least one line be a direct address (“O ___,” “Dear ___,” “You who ___”).
• End with a fragment that’s just sound (nonsense syllables, humming, static).

Optional intensifiers (choose one or more):

• Include one word in another language that slips in by accident.
• Strike through the “official” version of a line and leave the misheard one beside it.
• Use a refrain that keeps coming back wronger each time.
• Hide one real memory inside the nonsense, unannounced.

Micro-samples [Use as a feel-check or a template!]

Our farther who art in heaving,  

haloed by hallow be thy flame.  

Thy kingdom gum, thy wilting dawn,  

in hearth as in oven.  

Give us this stay our jelly bread,  

and frog-give us our presses—  

as we frog-give those who dress-pass—  

and lead us into lemon,  

deliver us some eels.  

Ah-men, ah-mend, amen.

DAY 6. Misheard Prayers

O widowed wind,
our farther in the heaving,

hollow be that flame,
thy kingdom gum,

thy well-be-done
in earth as in oven.

give us this day our jelly thread,
and frog-give us our tresst,

as we frog-give
those who pass us by the side road,
in rain. (I remember your coat here.)

lead us into lemon,
deliver us some eels,

dear lantern of wrong things,
still,
still—

ah-min,
ah-mere,
mmm-mmm-nn.

~ Oizys.

NovPoWriMo 2025: Day 5 — Inventory of What Remains

DAY 5. Inventory of What Remains

An inventory poem catalogs, lists, and tallies. Unlike the bookish errata/corrigenda, this one lives in the material world, what’s left behind when someone leaves, what survives after a season changes, what’s sitting in your pockets right now. Why are we doing this? Listing forces precision. You can’t hide in vague moods when you’re forced to name: receipts, half-burnt candle, six rice grains on the counter. The list is the poem, and its accumulations tell a story. Think of Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book with its famous lists (“Hateful Things,” “Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster”).

Or, Georges Perec’s obsession with inventories of objects and spaces! In 1973, Georges Perec wrote Approaches to What?, where he coined “infraordinary” to describe the unnoticed stratum of everyday life. Unlike the extraordinary (catastrophes, news), the infraordinary is the grain of habit: the crumbs on the counter, the bus timetable, the chair left askew. For Perec, writing meant refusing anaesthesia—“We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?” [and, that’s exactly what today’s inventory asks you to do: wake up to what usually disappears.] His An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, an observational inventory as art, is an hour-by-hour notes from a café which definitely trains your eye to name what we usually ignore. His Species of Spaces and Other Pieces are essays that turn rooms, lists, and addresses into literature, a catalog thinking all the way down. And finally, “Infraordinary” primer, by Jenny Odell on Perec on why noticing the ordinary is radical and how to practice it is a very useful frame for our Day 5’s ethos.

Ross Gay's “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” is a big-hearted modern catalog that shows how a list can swell into song which is great for pacing and accumulation. Poetry Foundation's article, Taking Stock with the Catalog Poem by Maggie Queeney is an amazing primer defining catalog/list poems with more such examples and teaching notes. How can we do this?

• Make a numbered list (at least 10 lines).
• Each line names a specific object or detail.
• Every 3rd line must add a sensory note (smell, sound, texture).
• Do not explain how these things connect. Let juxtaposition do the work.
• Title the poem “Inventory of What Remains.”

Optional intensifiers (choose one or more):

• Include one object that doesn’t exist in the real world (an impossible thing).
• Include one object that should not be there (out of place, dissonant).
• Strike through one item, as if deleted but still visible.
• End with a line that breaks the list format (a single declarative sentence, outside the catalog).

Even more optional craft tweaks (choose one or more):

• “Hateful / Grateful” split: Make two mini-lists (5 lines each) called Hateful Things / Grateful Things. Keep each line concrete (no abstractions). Do not explain, just let the objects indict or bless.
• Perec Hour: Set a timer for 10 minutes. Write only what you can see/hear right now (brand names, bus numbers, crumbs, the fan click). No metaphors. After the timer, add exactly two emotional words total.
• Catalog with a Tilt: Number to 10. Items 3, 6, 9 must include a sensory note (smell, texture, sound). Item 7 must be impossible. Item 10 breaks the list with a single declarative sentence.

Micro-samples [Use as a feel-check or a template!]

Two mismatched mugs stacked in the sink.

A bus ticket, date smudged into gray.

The faint sourness of rain in wool.

One photograph folded until the face disappears.

[Struck-through] keys you no longer carry.

A bottlecap still warm from your palm.

The silence that rearranges chairs.

An impossible feather, blue on both sides.

A cracked jar labeled “saffron.”

This is what you left me.

Inventory of What Remains

1. Two chipped teacups on the windowsill.

2. A bus ticket, month long expired.

3. The smell of cardamom caught in yesterday’s steam.

4. A stone I meant to return to the river.

5. The letter you never opened.

6. The echo of rain threading the balcony rails.

7. A mirror that reflects a room that isn’t here. (impossible)

8. One safety pin hooked to another.

9. The rust-taste of keys pressed to the tongue.

10. A dry jasmine string, still begging.

11. ~Your spare house key.~

12. That unbroken promise folded beneath a coin.

13. A blue feather that refuses dust.

14. A scarf that remembers more than it frays.

This is what you forgot to take with you.

~ Oizys.

NovPoWriMo 2025: Day 4 — Duplex of Two Places

DAY 4. Duplex of Two Places

A duplex is a braid of repetition. Each couplet borrows the previous line, shifts it a little, and carries on. Think: echo that returns changed. Today, let two geographies speak (or argue) in those echoes. Each repetition nudges the tense: past → present → conditional → future. So time itself is part of the drift.

The pattern: A “classic” duplex runs 7 couplets (14 lines):

1. Line 1 (A)

2. Line 2 (B)

3. Line 3 = repeat Line 2 (B), slightly altered

4. Line 4 (C)

5. Line 5 = repeat Line 4 (C), slightly altered

6. Line 6 (D)

7. Line 7 = repeat Line 6 (D), slightly altered

8. Line 8 (E)

9. Line 9 = repeat Line 8 (E), slightly altered

10. Line 10 (F)

11. Line 11 = repeat Line 10 (F), slightly altered

12. Line 12 (G)

13. Line 13 = repeat Line 12 (G), slightly altered

14. Line 14 = return to (or rhyme with) Line 1 (A)

“Altered” can be tiny (one word, tense, punctuation). The last line talks to the first, closing the loop.

So, how do we do this? Choose Two Places. Not postcards—weather, transit, doors, thresholds. Voice them in alternating couplets. You don’t have to label speakers if you don't want to; the imagery might or will out itself. With each repetition, shift tense (I was → I am → I would → I will). Let time tilt the meaning. Keep the diction clean, specific, quietly lyrical.

Optional intensifiers (choose one or more):

• Make Line 1 a sentence fragment and Line 14 complete it.
• Allow exactly one proper noun in the whole poem.
• Let the two places contradict each other on a small fact (season, smell, distance).
• You could do a variant like 

Micro-samples [Use as a feel-check or a template!]

The bridge keeps the river from finishing its sentence.

I walk where the guardrail remembers my hands.

I walk where the guardrail remembered my hands,

a city that writes in steam on the mouth of morning.

A city that wrote in steam on the mouth of morning

asks if departures count as prayer.

It asked if departures counted as prayer,

and the timetables answered in rain.

The timetables answer in rain,

which means don’t ask again today.

It means don’t ask again today,

though the other shoreline keeps spelling my name.

The other shoreline kept spelling my name—

the bridge finishes the river’s sentence.

Notice the tense drift: keeps → remembered → wrote → asked → answer → means → kept; the last line returns to the first image.

Let's uncomplicate. Draft a couplet list: 7 images (doorway, bridge, bus stop, kitchen window, station clock, stairwell, shoreline). Assign tenses: past → present → conditional → future (repeat as needed). Write couplets 1–2, then copy Line 2 down to Line 3 and tilt one word/tense. Keep going: each odd-numbered line repeats the previous line (tilted). Write Line 14 last: answer Line 1 without breaking the music. So, it will be something like this, skeletally:

1. ______________________________

2. ______________________________

3. (repeat #2, slightly altered)

4. ______________________________

5. (repeat #4, slightly altered)

6. ______________________________

7. (repeat #6, slightly altered)

8. ______________________________

9. (repeat #8, slightly altered)

10. _____________________________

11. (repeat #10, slightly altered)

12. _____________________________

13. (repeat #12, slightly altered)

14. (return to / rhyme with #1)

Some craft notes so it reads like you. If an echo feels cute, sand it down. Let place carry feeling, don’t name the emotion; let “timetables answered in rain” do the work. The last line shouldn’t explain; it should click.

Even more optional craft tweaks (choose one or more):

• “Duplex with Postcards” (each couplet contains a place-name redacted to initials)
• “Duplex with Transit Times” (each couplet stamped with a time).

Duplex of Two Places

1. Between riverbank brickwork, a doorway waits.

2. I stood where its threshold never learned my name.

3. I stand where its threshold never learned my name,

4. a skyline whispering through glass corridors.

5. A skyline whispers through glass corridors,

6. as if every elevator once descended into rain.

7. As if every elevator would descend into rain,

8. the pavements bargain for heat after midnight.

9. Pavements would bargain for heat after midnight,

10. though the river swears it ran colder here.

11. The river swore it will run colder here,

12. a promise folded into a stranger’s sleeve.

13. A promise folds into a stranger’s sleeve,

14. where the riverbank doorway waits.

~ Oizys.

NovPoWriMo 2025: Day 3 — Corrigenda Crown

DAY 3. Corrigenda Crown

In fixed forms, a “crown” often means linked sonnets; we’re adapting the idea: seven linked lists with a repeating line that mutates and returns. A crown of seven short poems. Each a corrigenda list (plural of corrigendum, “things to be corrected”). Each mini-poem looks like the back page of a book, but the book is a life. A refrain line appears at the end of each section and mutates slightly as we move from I→VII; the final section answers the first.

Corrigendum vs. Erratum:

• Erratum / Errata: a printing or production error that needs correction after publication.
• Corrigendum / Corrigenda: a correction issued by the author (the responsibility is owned).

For our purposes: Day 2’s sonnet used the errata vibe (typo-ish, house style); Day 3 leans into corrigenda: the speaker owns the mistake and formally corrects it. 

“Errata” vs. “Corrigenda” distinctions in publishing vary by house style; many venues use them interchangeably, but traditionally corrigenda implies author-issued corrections which are useful for our ownership theme.

[Some back-matter forms to pillage if you want to go down the rabbit hole: Errata, Corrigenda, Addenda, Appendix, Index, Colophon, Erratum Slip. Each brings its own tone, maybe try picking a couple per section...]

So, how do we do this? 

Structure:

• Seven sections (I–VII).
• Each section = 5–8 lines formatted like corrections.
• End each section with the same refrain phrase—but alter one word or punctuation each time to show drift.
• In section VII, the refrain returns to its original wording (or corrects it decisively).

Use any of these line shapes:

• p. 7, l. 3 — for “X” read “Y.”
• Index — delete “_____”; insert “_____.”
• Colophon — “_____” should read “_____.”
• n. 4 — footnote misnumbered; renumber as “4a.”

Crown logic:

• I: personal minutiae (dates, names).
• II: objects (keys, receipts, rooms).
• III: place & weather.
• IV: speech (misquotes, unsaid lines).
• V: time (calendars, clocks, seasons).
• VI: the body (breath, pulse, posture).
• VII: metadata (title, author, dedication) where the poem corrects itself.

The refrain (choose one):
1. “This will have to do.” → “This will have to do,” → “This will have to, do.” → “This will have to undo.” → … → final: “This will have to do.” 

—or—

2. “Leave as is.” → “Leave, as is.” → “Leave as is?” → “Leave as was.” → … → final: “Leave as is.”

Let's uncomplicate. Draft the refrain first (the seven inflections). Craft a messy list of things you’d correct (names, dates, petty facts, a misquote, a room that wasn’t the one). Sort your list into the seven domains above. Write Section I cleanly, end with Refrain 1/2. Copy its shape to build II–VII, letting the diction darken or lighten; each section ends on the next refrain mutation. In VII, either restore the first refrain exactly or correct the poem’s title/date/author in a final “Colophon” line.

Micro-samples [Use as a feel-check or a template!]

I

p. 2, l. 1 — for “December” read “the late rain.”
p. 4 — “we” should read “you near, then not.”
Index — delete “forever”; insert “for a season.”
Colophon — “light” to read “afterlight.”
Refrain: Leave as is.

II

p. 7, l. 3 — “key” should read “copy of a key.”
n. 2 — add “receipt folded twice.”
p. 9 — strike “gift”; set “return.”
Refrain: Leave, as is.

III

Map — “river” should read “reservoir.”
p. 12, l. 4 — for “storm” read “broadcast.”
Appendix — “distance” to read “detour.”
Refrain: Leave as is?

IV

p. 15 — quote marks misplaced; remove them.
p. 16, l. 6 — “I meant” should read “I learned.”
Refrain: Leave as was.

V

Calendar — “spring” misprinted; set “late.”
p. 20, l. 1 — for “on time” read “in time.”
Refrain: Leave us as is.

VI

n. 5 — “breath” [sic].
p. 24 — strike “stillness”; set “pause.”
Refrain: Leave what is.

VII

Colophon — author to read “the one who returns.”
Title — for “Corrigenda” read “Admittance.”
Date — for “2025” read “undated.”
Refrain: Leave as is.

Optional intensifiers (choose one or more):

• Use Roman numerals (I–VII) for section heads.
• Insert one impossible reference per crown (e.g., p. 0, p. ∞, folio -1).
• Make each section’s first correction echo the first word of the prior section’s last correction (a soft chain).
• Allow one correction to restore tenderness; keep the rest clinical.

Corrigenda Crown

I
p. 0, l. 1 — for “first light” read “false start.”
Index — delete “A.”; insert “Unnamed.”
n. 1 — “father” garbled; retype as “a voice leaving a room.”
Appendix — misunderstanding of dates; reorder heartbreak → spring → birth.
Colophon — “home” should read “doorway I never crossed.”
Refrain: This will have to do.

II
Doorplate — “key” should read “key returned.”
p. 7, l. 3 — for “gift” read “loan, briefly honored.”
n. 2 — add “ticket stub, printed wrong city in bold.”
Folio ∞ — shelves mislabeled; memory placed under “misc. regrets.”
Inventory — strike “souvenir”; set “evidence.”
Refrain: This will have to do,

III
Map — “sea” should read “loud reservoir fenced against swimmers.”
p. 12, l. 4 — for “stormcloud” read “forecast that never came.”
Index — delete “north”; insert “somewhere wetter.”
n. 3 — “June wind” mismeasured; correct to “shy & insufficient.”
Atlas — river mouth misplaced; find it in your throat.
Refrain: This will have to, do.

IV
p. 15 — “I said” should read “I rehearsed.”
Quotation — remove quotes; the truth walked out mid-sentence.
n. 4a — sentimental tone flagged; re-tag as “audited apology.”
Corrigendum — “stay” should read “I might have stayed.”
p. ∞ — misprint of silence; index as “statement.”
Refrain: This will have to undo.

V
Calendar — “spring” overstated; set “late, late.”
p. 20, l. 1 — for “in time” read “out of phase.”
Season notes — monsoon should read “private weather.”
Index — shift “now” to “only once.”
Erratum slip — recall misdated grief; set to “ongoing.”
Refrain: This will have not to do.

VI
n. 5 — “pulse” undercounted; include extra beats from fear.
p. 24 — strike “posture”; set “leaning toward absence.”
Colophon — “skin” spelled wrong; meant “warning.”
Body text — for “breath held” read “breath re-negotiated.”
Appendix — miracles are out of stock; substitute quiet.
Refrain: This will have to un-do.

VII
Title — for “Corrigenda” read “Relearning.”
Author — for “the witness” read “the one who admits.”
Dedication — delete “to no one”; insert “to the late self.”
Date — misprinted; list as “ongoing, with amendments.”
Colophon — please reshelve joy under “possible.”
Refrain: This will have to do. (return, earned)

NovPoWriMo 2025: Day 2 — “Errata Sonnet”

DAY 2. Errata Sonnet

What are errata? In publishing, an erratum (singular) or errata (list) is a set of post-print corrections bound in or issued separately. We start by mimicking the dry book-history texture. And, what is volta? The volta is the "turn" in a sonnet, marking a shift in thought, emotion, or argument, often signaled by words like "but" or "yet". In a Petrarchan sonnet, the volta occurs between the octave (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). In a Shakespearean sonnet, it typically happens between the 12th and 13th lines, or just before the final couplet.

Kevin Young, “Errata” is a tour-de-force of misprints/malaprops as music which shows how error can be the engine. Michael Donaghy, “Erratum”, though not a single “errata poem,” but the title points to craft that’s precise, revision-aware, and bookish with can be a very useful tonal compass for us.

So, why are we doing this? A sonnet compiled from errata, the little correction notes printed after books go to press. Fourteen lines of corrections to a life/text. The turn (volta) arrives when a “correction” can’t be corrected. Errata are tiny apologies to the reader; they acknowledge the layered self you opened in Day 1. We correct spellings, dates, names until we hit a thing that won’t yield to ink. 

How can we do this? Write 14 lines that look like errata from the back of a book. Each line should include a brief citation and a correction. Examples:

• p. 7, l. 3 — for “winter” read “late rain.”
• p. 12 — “you left” should read “you were already gone.”

Use a volta at or around line 9: a correction that can’t be corrected (logic collapses, memory resists). Keep the voice dry, precise, bookish: no explanation, just adjustments. 

Optional meter: keep a light iambic pressure if you enjoy it, but music is secondary to form. But, there are some required elements (bake these in):

• Include one [sic].
• Include one strikethrough (a word visibly “withdrawn”).
• Include one italicized aside (set like this)—a typesetter’s whisper.
• End with a final line that corrects the title or date of the poem itself.

How to actually do it? Let's uncomplicate [before we lose interest...] Make a tiny inventory of factuals you’d be tempted to fix: a date, a place, a word someone used for you. Draft 6–8 straightforward corrections first (lines 1–8). Draft 4–5 lines where grammar can’t fix what’s wrong (lines 9–13). Land on a last line that edits the poem’s own metadata like title, author, or year.

Micro-samples [Use as a feel-check or a template!]

p. 3, l. 1 — for “dawn” read “streetlight still on.”

p. 5, l. 9 — delete “forever”; insert “for a season.”

p. 7 — name “M.” should read “M——.”

p. 12, l. 4 — “threshold” to read “turnstile.”

p. 14 — replace “promise” with “receipt.”

p. 18, l. 2 — “home” [sic].

p. 21 — “ocean” should read “reservoir.”

p. 26, l. 6 — strike “stillness”; set “pause.”

p. 30 — there is no way to change this.

p. 31, l. 5 — the line breaks itself (leave as is).

p. 33 — “we” to read “I,” then “I,” then “I.”

p. 34, l. 2 — punctuation fails; keep the breath.

p. 36 — the absence was typeset correctly.

Colophon — for “NovPoWriMo 2025” read “NovPoWriMo, undated.”

Optional intensifiers (choose one or more):

• Use Roman numerals for page numbers (I, V, XIV…).
• Introduce one nonexistent page reference (p. 0 or p. ∞).
• Let exactly one correction restore a true tenderness; everything else stays clinical.

Errata Sonnet

1. p. 3, l. 1 — for “November” read “late rain.”

2. p. 5, l. 9 — “origin” should read “ongoing.”

3. p. V — substitute “joy” with “quiet compliance.”

4. p. 7 — name “M.” to read “M——.”

5. p. 8, l. 4 — “home” [sic].

6. p. 9 — strike “always”; set “sometimes.”

7. p. 13, l. 2 — for “bruise” read “ink.”

8. p. ∞ — insert “the train never stopped.”

9. p. 21 — “you left” should read “you were already gone.”

10. p. 26, l. 6 — punctuation fails; keep the breath (just hold it).

11. p. 30 — restore “mercy” despite misprint (typesetter wept).

12. p. 31 — the line breaks itself; leave as is.

13. p. 33 — “we” to read “I,” then “I,” then “I.”

14. Colophon — for “Errata Sonnet (2025)” read “Uncorrectable.”