I’ve been away from lyric writing for a long time, but I got a few lines stuck in my head, and they refused to leave me alone, so I wrote this.

I see the storm clouds gathering
Rumbling in the distance
It was already hazy to begin with
Soon it’ll come crashing in
 
You’re angry at the world
and at yourself
And I made you into the villain
Pretended I was innocent
In the end it didn’t make a difference
 
We both said things we didn’t really mean
I’m still just trying not to bleed
Learned to tuck myself away
Pretended it was okay
Now the cold’s here anyway
There’s nothing left to say
 
You’re angry at the world
And at yourself
But I made you into the villain
Pretended I was innocent
We both knew that I wasn’t
 
Try to salvage what we can
Wrecked things til the end
Maybe one day we’ll make amends
I’ll offer you a hand
And we’ll rebuild what we can
 
But you’re angry at the world
And you’re angry at yourself
And I made you into the villain
Like I didn’t fit your plans
 
We both said things we didn’t mean
I’m still just trying not to bleed
The cold came anyway
Now there’s nothing left to say
 
Because you’re angry at the world
And you’re angry at yourself
I made you into the villain
So I didn’t have to be
But the storm came anyway
Wrecked things til the end
 
You’re angry at the world
You’re angry I couldn’t see
I made you into the villain
So I didn’t have to be

Process

My mentee and I were talking through her second submission piece, and I developed a general prompt for her to write a poem or two with: write something inspired, however closely or loosely, by nature. I gave her a set of words to think about, and we decided it’d be nice to both write a piece since I’ve been trying to get back into lyric writing. This is the piece that I came up with, expanding on some lines that had gotten stuck in my head. Funny enough, I wrote mine inspired by a “storm” and she wrote hers on “rain.” I think our pieces are quite complementary. We edited one another’s pieces, and this is the end result of mine.