The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: STUDIO

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?
For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are straws, studio, stuffed animal, summer job, tattoos, telephone, tennis court, test, theater.

STUDIO
I've written before about my own studio – the Purple Horse Poetry Studio and Music Room. I chose “studio” (over “study” or “library” or “office” or any other name because I identify as an artist first. Here's a quick poem:
If You Want to Know My Heart, Come Inside My Studio
one chamber:four walls to holdeighty-eight piano keysfive cello strings
two dozen shelves fat with booksand hungry for moremore more
a hodgepodge galleryof watercolor, collage,pen and inkthe exact same scentas woodsmoke
its heartbeat,a window carrying insidetree   mountainbluebird    lake
one light, pulsingand strungwith yellow-edgedpictures of loved-ones' faces
open-shut-opendoor taped overwith Dear __ greetings
two roomy closets where poems tuckthemselves betweenquilts   paintribbon    thread
the air aswirlwith dreamsmade red with words –
some silent and true as stars,others slippingwhispering, still:
                       dust beneath the door.

- Irene Latham