Flenched

A Haiku for a New Year

Created on Midjourney

He lived a flenched life

Glimpses of something better

Dreams not realized

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Happy New Year, everyone. I decided to start the New Year with a haiku. Flenched is about a man whose life never gets better. His dreams always remain just out of reach, never materializing.

I hope all of you live anything but a flenched life. Let’s all reach for a better year in 2023. Let’s focus on the positive, finding gratitude in small, everyday things and celebrating big things if they come.

The idea for this haiku originated with an obscure word provide by @susie_dent (Twitter, though by the time of publication, maybe not?) Susie publishes definitions of interesting words. Flenched caught my attention.

Here is what Susie had to say about it: “A quick reminder of the wonderful ‘flenched’ from Scots, used to describe weather (or life) that looks likely to improve, but never actually does.”

I used the following prompt on Midjourney to create this image:

“He lived a flenched life always on the cusp of something that never materialized.”

I could have used that sentence for a story, but decided to alter it to conform to a haiku structure for publication. I hope you like both the image and the haiku.