Theme: The Soundtrack of My Life Music does more than fill silence. It testifies. It timestamps. It drags memory out by the collar. Some songs raised us. Some exposed us. Some held our hand through chapters we barely survived. Today we write the life that lived between speakers, choruses, breakdowns, and bars. Prompt 1 – I Learned Life in 16 Bars Write a poem about the music that taught you something real before life explained it gently. What did rhythm, lyrics, or genre teach you about love, pain, confidence, grief, survival, or selfhood? Prompt 2 – This Beat Got Receipts Write a poem about a song that knows too much about you. A track that brings back a version of you, a truth, a wound, or a memory every time it plays. Prompt 3 – Every Wound Got a Playlist Write a poem about a season of your life through sound. Let the music, genre, or lyric style become the emotional map for what that chapter felt like.

(Activity) Alliteration with patience and intention. No rush, just resonance. (Exercise) Let your creativity flow. Topic: Time Here’s My Alliteration Offering Time teaches tough truths through tired trials. Ticking toward transformation through tenacious trust. Temporary troubles trying to trick tender hearts, Still, time tends to those treading through traveling. #SouthernSeoulSpeaks #tresduravia

(Activity) Inner Weather Check (Exercise) Name your current internal climate using weather language. One phrase or term only. No explanation. Here’s My Offering (Example) Glow advisory in effect, confidence visible from a distance. #SouthernSeoulSpeaks #tresduravia

after Craven Smith Latisha. Not the short one. The tall one. The one who has the same surname as Steve. I’d watch her go by my homeroom class—walking the halls of Springfield Gardens High School—none of my homies gave her a second (or first) look. Latisha, the tall one, a late bloomer with a cute ass overbite. I’d get weak at the knees when she smiled. I would’ve loved for her to choose me for a semester full of uneven hickeys. But a wet-behind-the-ears freshman had no chance at a twelfth grade goddess, dressed in no-name clothes, sporting a short bob with bangs and a nameplate necklace. Latisha, the tall one, slimmer than a lowercase l. Old Timers would talk about skinny women and say, “If she’s slim, she’ll make ya head spin.” I lost track of my high school crush when Stride Rite went out of business. I’d walk by, watching her sell baby shoes, on my way to shoplift hip-hop cassette tapes out of Sam Goody Music Store. Latisha, the tall one, bailed me out of Mall Security jail with just her employee ID and a beautiful but guarded smile that you’d rarely see. (Because she shied away from her own reflection.) We sat in her Mitsubishi Mirage listening to Babyface and Tevin Campbell. It wasn’t my preferred listening choice—but my newly released TOO $HORT cassette got confiscated. The security guard threw it into a box marked “shrinkage” and made me sign a document marked DNR. I almost died, seeing Do Not Return stamped at the top of the page; it had me on the verge of needing resuscitation. That ban barred me from my boo! That day lives on in my mind, although Green Acres Mall passed away. She still haunts my fantasies and catalyzes memories… Mr. Woolery, a great chemistry teacher, assigns permanent lab partners to the two Latishas in our class. He points at a metal stool, next to the Magnetic Polarity chart, and tells me: “You’ll be with Latisha. The tall one.”