Pen & Page Prompt #27

This Week: Distorted Time and Emotional Gravity

May 14, 2026

Pen & Page: The Hours We Carry

A Prompt About Bent Time, Repetition, and What Refuses to Move On

The clock in this image feels less like an object and more like a force—something pulling the night inward. The numbers remain intact, but the world around them has begun to curve and blur. It raises the question: What happens when time no longer behaves the way we expect it to?

Premise

We often think of time as orderly: linear, measurable, dependable. But emotionally, that’s rarely true. Some moments stretch endlessly. Others disappear almost before we can name them. Memory loops. Grief repeats. Joy vanishes too quickly. A single conversation can echo for years.

This week’s prompt invites you to write into distorted time.

Setup

Study the image for a few moments before writing.

Notice the swirl around the clock face—the sensation that the night itself is bending. The stars seem caught in motion. The clock remains centered, but even it appears weathered, unstable, almost suspended.

Begin with a speaker who has lost track of time in some way.

Not necessarily literally.

Perhaps they are waiting for news. Perhaps they keep returning to the same memory. Perhaps they wake at 3:12 every morning. Perhaps an ordinary evening suddenly opens into something larger and stranger.

Core Prompt

Write a poem in which time behaves unexpectedly.

You might explore:

a moment that repeats
an hour that refuses to end
a memory that interrupts the present
a conversation imagined years later
the feeling of being “stuck” inside a season of life
a clock, watch, alarm, countdown, or missed deadline
the tension between cosmic time and human time
the strange elasticity of grief, love, fear, or longing

Let the poem move associatively if it wants to. Allow images to recur or shift slightly each time they appear.

The poem does not need to explain the distortion. It only needs to inhabit it.

Craft Menu

You might try:

moving between present tense and past tense
using circular structure rather than linear progression
juxtaposing large-scale imagery (stars, galaxies, seasons) with ordinary domestic details
allowing the poem to “spiral” rather than proceed logically

Constraints & Twists (Optional, choose 1 or 2)

Include an exact time somewhere in the poem.

Let one object appear in two different eras or versions of reality.

Write the poem as though the speaker is caught between midnight and morning.

Share Back

Were you able to arrive easily at the time to write about? Does that time remain in the forefront of your thinking or did you need to retrieve it from the recesses? What does that tell you?

Reflection

What have you been waiting for without fully admitting it to yourself?

Today’s image prompt is courtesy of photographer Gerrie Paino, whose minimalist approach to photography is rooted in curiosity, close observation, and moving lightly through the world.

A Small Note

There are currently three spaces remaining for this year’s Retreat & Recharge: A Poet’s Retreat in November.

If you’ve been longing for dedicated writing time, quiet conversation, creative renewal, and a few days immersed in poetry and community, you can read more here.