Auburn’s life had been a wrong turn

Though she felt it was nothing she earned

So many nights she wanted to be burned

to ashes, to be collected in an urn

her family

the jury that never adjourns.

Is it a poem that is worth keeping? I don’t know. However, at our Spillman Library Workshop, Bill Gillard did an exercise where we just let words flow from a color. I chose the color auburn. I was trying to choose a different color (One harder to rhyme)

And I had a main character in a Wip whose name was Auburn.

It really struck me the way letting the sounds create the meaning led to something that encapsulated my main character. Creativity wove a list of words into an understanding of my character Auburn and spawned a unique concept- someone desiring death and envisioning it to be so total that she is nothing but ashes. The symbolism being that her life experience has disintegrated her completely.

Here is the color word riff that lead to the poem

Auburn

A burn

A turn

An urn

Wrong turn

Adjurn

Awkward

p.s- The workshop was a ton of fun!