write your way to healing 💞
5 poetry prompts + a new poem, in honor of national poetry month
happy national poetry month, dear friends! here are 5 poetry prompts that encourage healing, learning, and growth 🌱 these would also work beautifully for prose, and i’m sure they can be incorporated into other genres too. if you use any of them, i’d love to hear how it went in the comments below. happy writing!
Healing Words: Write the apology you never got. Or, write the apology you never gave.
What do you really want to say? Express your rage, vengeance, desires, or fears without censoring or judging yourself.
Body Love: Choose a part of your body that you want to show love to. Perhaps it’s something you feel insecure about, or something society teaches you “shouldn’t” love. Write a love letter to this part of your body.
Freedom Dreaming: Drift into a daydream that imagines the world you want to live in. Tap into your senses—what does this world look, sound, feel, taste, smell like? Where are you, what are you doing, and who are you with?
Eco-Portrait: Choose something from nature that represents you. Write a self-portrait poem that uses this natural element to illustrate your feelings, experience, or perception of yourself. Try inserting the line “I am a [your natural element here]” in the middle of your poem.
i got to get outta here: a poem
lastly, i’ll leave you with a poem i recently wrote that inspired the final prompt. you can click on my instagram post to hear me read it out loud :)
I’ve gone to this barre studio for a decade now
& they still don’t know my name. 30 pink-skinned,
straw-haired women pulse in plié and I am the only
one who can move on beat. I am invisible in Colorado,
floating without a trace as trucks barrel through
and those who hallucinate an american dream
talk at me with vacant eyes. I am a fiddle leaf fig
struggling to grow a single leaf in the arid, colorless West.
Here, they conquer mountains and brag about it.
Plant me by the sea where monsoons come like a promise,
where grass grows mango-sweet in the emerald green jungle
and we bow to the land, say tabi tabi po, first asking
asking permission to pass. There, I’ll grow tree-tall,
40 feet to the sky with my roots making love to the dirt.
Do they know fiddle leaves are supposed to fruit?
Bitter figs unfit to be eaten. Plant me in the wild Earth
and watch me grow my bounty, just for me. Just for me. Just for me.
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