LETTERS & LINES: Twenty-six on 20
Poetry is not my usual medium, but sometimes a prompt will inspire me to write in that form. Below is a piece sparked by a contest; the challenge was to write a poem in 20 lines focused on loss. The 20-line constraint got me thinking about other number-defined things and, somehow, the alphabet came to mind — 26 letters. Hmmmm, I pondered: How about a poem in 20 lines about 26 letters. OK, I said to myself, I'll give it a go. The content evolved as I wrote, with me not knowing at line 1 where I would end up at line 20; all I knew was that, somehow, I needed to make the 26 letters of the English alphabet the focus woven around the idea of 'loss'. And do this on 20 lines. (How long is a line? What do the contest creators mean by 'line'? I don't know and I didn't let that bother me.) The result is below. I'll let you be the judge of it... All I know is that, even though I missed the contest deadline, I had fun playing with my idea in this form, and