Tear down wallpaper

Ribbons of blue

Feign our perfection

Paste someone new

A deceptive visage

Believe your mirage In delusion together

Under fictitious stars Dreams becoming vapour

Try holding on

Dream of wallpaper

(Your beautiful wallpaper)

You don’t see Cold brick beneath

Add another layer

Your delicate chimera

It’s flaking now

Cover me again

Pretend I’m new

Made for you

Dream of wallpaper

(Such pretty wallpaper)

Dress rotting wood

You can’t undo

With false hopes

And thick glue I beg you

Construct me anew

This house creaks

You won’t leave

You don’t believe

I’m still torn

Your paper’s worn

Can’t be yours

I’m just adorned

(With pretty, pretty wallpaper)

This is a poem I wrote for a portfolio last year. I wanted to experiment with a lyrical repetition of a phrase and song-like rhyme scheme but within a long-form poem.

Reflection

I wrote “Wallpaper” as part of a constrained writing exercise, where I could only use three words per line and I had to use the word “wallpaper”, something randomly chosen by a classmate. I felt freer when writing under constraints because it removed the stressful element of deciding upon a structure and form for the poems that I wrote, allowing me to focus on finding creative ways to convey meaning and/or emotion within the limitations. After taking into account feedback provided by classmates, my second draft expanded the poem to be four stanzas long, and I added more repetition with slight variations (“[With/Such] pretty wallpaper”) to tie them together in a lyrical way, which improved the flow.