The prose poem is an escalator that starts and ends in infinity. It doesn’t like matching socks or sheet sets, but loves the way that wildflowers organize committees to get things done. The petals of a prose poem sway like wild cosmos along the roadside, piercing the solitary melancholy of quarantine with a brief flash of holy exuberance. Prose poems’ eyelashes are exquisitely curled from dew drops and not enough fresh vegetables.
Like that ex-boyfriend your mother still asks about, there’s a hint of awkwardness in a prose poem, a highway without exits, exits without hallways, and stairways that lead out past the frozen foods, beyond the boxes of rice. To be in a crowded room in a soundproof glass box or to lounge at the very bottom of the ocean for a tea party, that is where the cartographers are sending you.