What Is Missing?

Negative Space challenge: The Prompt - Write a poem shaped by what's missing. Let an absence, omission, or empty space become as important as what you put on the page.

Negative space is what surrounds the subject. In a poem, it can be silence, omission, white space, or the thing the speaker refuses to name.

Write a poem shaped by what's missing. Maybe it's a person who never appears, a word you keep avoiding, a gap in a memory, or something the reader can feel without ever being told directly.

Use form, line breaks, repetition, restraint, or even the space on the page itself to make that absence felt. Whatever approach you choose, the emptiness should do real work in the poem.

Vocal Media

Memory

I never gave you permission to pick those berries
I will leave them right there then
And I will leave mine as your wife and daughter
said to go ahead and pick those berries for your son.

Your daughter has been in two domestic relationships
Domestic violence is a learned behavior
She didn't learn it in my home
We will just have to agree to disagree

You are looking a bit chunky
Oh no, you made her cry
How could you say that?
I'm sorry

Where is your mother?
She is home
Remember when we...
Yes, and how is he now

Thank you for saying that
I never know what to say
This is hard
Really hard

Who are you again
Your niece
That's right
Where are you living now

Sorry
So sorry
I'm really sorry
I didn't mean that

I'm just tired
I am not sleeping well
Someone my age
I shouldn't do this

It runs in my family
my mother and father
have you heard of type 3
Yes it could be