If familects are the unique words and phrases that are created within a family from inside jokes, shared experiences, and specific needs, then we can think of friendlects as the parallel for private languages created between close friends. These specific, social dialects bond a family and friend unit. What happens when the two languages meet? Write a poem that incorporates a word or phrase that is only used within your family and one that was created with a friend. In your poem, you might find yourself exploring themes of intimacy and the powers and shortcomings of language as a mode of expression and communication. You could also consider how communal bonds are built, ideas around belonging and unbelonging, and being an insider or an outsider. How do you bond with others through language?

In Steven Soderbergh’s dark comedy film The Christophers, a young Black artist takes on an assignment to forge a series of paintings by an elderly, white, formerly renowned painter, whose earlier works are worth millions. The older painter’s grown children hope that the eventual sales of these forged earlier works will provide them with an influx of wealth as the painter has not produced noteworthy pieces in decades and has since been “canceled.” Initially an antagonistic relationship between an older artist and his supposedly hired-out-of-nowhere assistant, the two eventually warm toward each other and develop a bond through their exchanges about the value and legacy of art. Write a personal essay about an instance when you forged an unusual bond with an unlikely stranger or acquaintance, despite significant differences in age, identity, and temperament. What conversations and ideas brought you two together?

As recent studies reveal the dangers of social media addiction, particularly with younger people, there has been an increase in bans on cell phones in high schools around the nation and worldwide, which in turn has prompted debate about the limits of restrictions, parental concerns, and the effectiveness of bans when many teenagers often resort to using burner phones. This week, write a short story that revolves around a recently imposed ban on cell phones at a high school and the ripple effects. When a formerly used mode of communication is disrupted, what kind of miscommunications might occur? Explore various characters’ viewpoints, including students, teachers, administration, parents, and groups of teen friends. Are there potential upsides? You might even find yourself incorporating elements of a comedy of errors or a mystery.

“Summer grass aches and whispers. // It wants something; it calls and sings; it pours / out wishes to the overhead stars.” In Carl Sandburg’s three-stanza poem “Summer Grass,” originally published in his 1928 collection Good Morning, America, the poet explores sentiments of longing and transition, capturing the spiky heat and dryness of summer through a personification of grass straining for cool, nourishing hydration, and then the deliverance of rain. As summer slowly transitions into autumn, compose a series of short poems that manifest both the physical sensations and the emotional elements you might associate with two consecutive seasons, moving from one to the other. How can you play with rhythm and line breaks, sound and space, to express movement and energy?