No one shares my bed this morning
as I wake to a half-recalled lifescape.
Today begins like so many others,
mocked by the hands of an analog dream,
looking for the time, searching for the flow. 
I spend way too much time trying.
So much of life unfolds this way,
starting at the end, ending at the start.

So this is the first day I didn’t try to meld my two prompts. This draft poem is written for Miz Quickly‘s “ladder” prompt, challenging us to write a poem bottom-to-top, last line first. With a few minor edits to word choice, this is how I got the to the top. NaPoWriMo is asking for a tall tale, for which I have the first and last lines only: “Precocious baby smokes cigars/Precocious baby stands astride the harbor, a diapered Colossus.” I’m quite fond of precocious baby, but he did not want to climb the ladder with Miz Q today. Maybe he’ll reappear somewhere down the road.