The drama


Another one using a prompt from The Magic Words. The character is not in the relationship he thought he was in. Is his perspective right, or is he only coming up with an answer that keeps him comfortable? This is the prompt.

And this is what “he” wrote.

Breakup Poem

You ask me if I am crushed.
But I am not crushed.
I swore you were the lead in my life.
I hoped you were the principal.
Now I walk out of this broken alliance
and see the play for the first time
and know that you are not the play.
I am the lead,
and I am the principal,
and I am the play.

©Becky Cochrane, 2025

Escape, Part 2

Closely related to today’s Photo Friday submission: One person’s escape to a place is another person’s escape from a place. This part of the Neverending Saga hasn’t been written: a character will walk away from the California dreams that came true.


©Becky Cochrane, 2025

(landscape illustration from a free downloadable coloring page; words are from my word stickers books)

Placeholder on Hump Day

Wednesday got away from me–a whole lot going on at Houndstooth Hall at the moment. I read a stunning poem by Lynne Shapiro in Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, and it inspired me to begin a character poem, but I’ll need to finish the poem later and will return to this post to add it when it’s ready. (ETA: Done! See bottom of this post.)

In the meantime, this is Shapiro’s poem.

Your Dead Mother

Dangles from the sky
Like a slim moon
Strung on a string
Silvery blue dress
Pleated like a curtain
Shimmers in your
Room at night
As cocktail gloves
And long fingers
Reach down to caress
Your sleepy head

Composing my poem also made me think of this sculpture that was our late friend Steve’s, which always has a place in our home.

ETA:
Below is the poem I wrote using the word list and title from Write The Poem. It’s a scene that’s maybe two novels away in the Neverending Saga, though it’s been planned a long time. It’s as if whoever put this list of words together could see into the future. My poem is the reason I thought of Steve’s sculpture.

Nighttime
Darkness holds a secret.
He’s in his fourth decade of keeping it.
Less than two decades since four collaborators
joined him in the shadows.
Sleepless, he keeps vigil over her in the dim room.
He wants to whisper,
“She is the one who cradles you in the moon’s crescent.
Even when the sky is moonless, she is there.”
His silence ensures she will not become wakeful.
The black secret will not touch her.

©Becky Cochrane, 2025

Tiny Tuesday!

She’s like a small but deadly insect, threatening everyone this character loves and tries to protect from her malevolence. If there’s any battle in the Neverending Saga, it’s this one, between mother and son, but also the one he wages with himself out of fear he will become like her.


©Becky Cochrane 2025

These sticky poetry words and phrases include lots of given names, and when I saw hers, I knew I had to give him a poem. I’d never give her one.

Mindful Monday

I used Joseph Fasano’s The Magic Words poetry prompts book to speak in the voice of a Neverending Saga character whose trust has been broken. My characters’ lives may be radically different from mine, but I think their voices come so willingly to me because we share fragments of our identities, emotions, and experiences.

This was the prompt:

This is my character’s poem. I don’t reuse the same nouns or verbs (which Fasano says is fine–better to write for the poem than to a formula).

Mistake Poem

This is how a connection persists,
by losing its expectations.
This is how a falseness roots,
by falling in middle ground.
This is how a trust erodes,
by stumbling on concessions.
I am what I am, a willing accomplice
that loses, that falls, that stumbles,
and then that rises.
Look at me. Look at my breakthrough.
This is how a connection fractures.

©Becky Cochrane, 2025

Sunday Sundries


Sometimes, it’s all about poetry. Bottom left, my three new sticker books with words and phrases that can be arranged into poetry or thoughts. The Magnetic Poetry™ refrigerator tin that holds words and also provides a fridge “door’s” magnetic surface for assembling them. A Write The Poem book that offers many writing prompts. Three works of contemporary poetry to get me away from my go-to poets like Dickinson, Frost, etc., and read (or re-read) and enjoy Lynn Domina’s Corporal Works; Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems with over 101 contributors; and Aaron Fagan’s Garage Poems. Joseph Fasano’s The Magic Words: Simple Poetry Prompts That Unlock the Creativity in Everyone.

Finally, my Inspire Journal, because I intend to use all these different means to write a poem every day this week which directly corresponds to the voices or experiences of characters in the Neverending Saga.


Today, I used The Healing Words Kit™ from Magnetic Poetry™ to pull words and arrange them on a magnetic board for one of the four main voices in my series. In case you have trouble reading from the photo, her poem is:

you would see or listen to
only
beauty of body and voice
but I am
wisdom courage
grace compassion
heart love
so our time is no more
goodbye
free
I can be my whole self

©Becky Cochrane, 2025

Saturday’s Crafty Wrap-up

Current sketchbook used for saving coloring pages; cover collaged by me.

Because of Photo Friday, I didn’t post anything about crafting yesterday, but I did work on something. As I’ve mentioned, the large sketch book where I collect my completed coloring pages will be full soon, even though when I got to the back of the book, I began putting colored pages on the backs of used pages. I wondered if I had another sketchbook as large as that one, and I do, but the front cover isn’t made of reinforced paper or cardboard, so I don’t know if it will hold up to collaging and a lot of use, like the current one.

It’s an old sketch book of our late friend Steve’s. It only has a couple of sketches he started it in, but I’d forgotten I used it back in June of 2012, when I did the 30 Days of Creativity challenge. If you were around then, you might remember that I’d sketch something on a page, then use it for a backdrop with my wee plastic ram being a director of dolls or action figures, etc., doing scenes from different movies. Like, for example, one I did for the movie The Secret Life of Bees. On Friday, after running errands, including having photos printed from those 2012 challenges, I added the photos and explanations to the original sketches. Like this.

After a visit to Texas Art Supply on Thursday, I also started something else that I finished today. I’d found sticker books there with words and phrases that could be turned into poetry (like Magnetic Poetry, but more permanent).

I love these and put together a poem in my Inspire journal (all its pages are related in some way to the Neverending Saga and its characters). I finished that page today. I’m glad I did something creative to end the week, because today (March 8) is Riley’s birthday. One of the ways to resist, overcome, and stay steady when the world is full of chaos, confusion, conflict, and catastrophe, is a far more important “C” word: CREATE. I know Riley would be the first to agree with this. His life was often a series of struggles, and that’s when he sat at the piano or picked up a guitar and turned it all into music and lyrics. And even if the world, or at least some part of the world, will never acknowledge this, humanity does need art and find it healing. Sometimes it feels like the real division in the world is between haters and healers. I’ve learned a lot about that in the last couple of months.


©Becky Cochrane, 2025

One more thing I did today, in recognition of International Women’s Day, is post this composite to Instagram, described as “just a few of the women who nurtured, mentored, and taught me over the years, expanding my heart, mind, and soul. I thank them and all the others whose photos I don’t have.”