Assignment #3

I had a lot of fun with this prompt: skin, prose poetry, internal rhyme.

The idea of internal rhyme in a prose poem was interesting to me. I tried to use it throughout the piece, but I think a lot of it ended up where traditionally I might have put line breaks. So not quite as internal as it could have been…?

Impenetrable 

It’s OK, I have a thick skin. She said. When they walked away she thought to herself. What does that even mean? She still heard them. Hard words travel at the speed of sound, pounding down the air the same as soft syllables. Technically their impact, the force, in fact should be the same. And what if it was? Did that mean she was unshakable in the face of any emotion? Kindness. Cruelty. Indifference. Devotion. Maybe her skin was as paper thin, lose or win, as anyone’s. Only she had heard more. Endured more. Grown numb. Staccato syllables, whether gifted or hurled, leaving only tingling traces, her world bereft of meaning. Was it no lasting marks or a careening constellation of calloused scars, connected stars, that would protect her more? Is there a difference? She wondered. Unsure.