In late 2017, inspired by Friedrich Schiller's distichs with a hexameter line followed by a pentameter line, and frustrated by a period when everything I wrote turned unexpectedly dark, no matter the subject, I began writing "Dystopian Distichs" to get dark ideas on paper by themselves. Today, my Facebook Memories reminded me of my distich from 26 March 2018: "There are so many people whose friends and relations have died in the shelling. / Our mental and physical health is deteriorating." The lines were inspired by quotation in a newspaper article about shelling in Syria; this month, they could just as well be spoken by someone experiencing the war in Ukraine. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 March 2022)
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