How do you spend a day off?
by Arina Alam, India. Second place in the Writory International Poetry Contest, November 2025, scored 94 out of 100.
How Do You Spend a Day Off? How do you spend a day off? Among six mundane days— a single sigh of sky, a pearl that slips from the necklace of routine. Do you weave hibiscus through your tousled hair? Or do you bury your face in the labyrinth of pages, where mystery wanders through the dried veins of forgotten books? Does the orange winter sun play upon your waist, as you draw the blanket close in a feline drowse— and the noon pauses softly inside your breath? Do you stop spinning the wheel of anxious thoughts, like the old woman on the moon? The hue of your heart is like the moon woman’s silver hair. Do you steal the hue of butterfly wings to color the pages of your poetry? Or do you press the pages of The Bell Jar with your slender, crimson-painted fingers— as if sealing sorrow between each line? Do the clouds rest upon your hair, while melancholy hums through your veins? Or do you just make avocado toast to fit inside the frame of a curated life? Or do you sip the ecstasy of cheap dopamine, scrolling through reels of borrowed joy? How far will you go to safeguard your off day? Will you slip into a mermaid’s suit, and dive through the quiet ache of the sea— to rest, at last, in the soft blossom of mussels?
Read all the winning poems with their scores, or enter the current round: every entry is read blind, scored out of 100 and receives a certificate.