Altered book pages 33 & 34

When they were first married, my parents lived in Portsmouth because my dad was going to school there to become an auto mechanic. A week or so before I was due, my mom went back home to stay with her parents so she'd be in Berlin, where her doctor was located, for my arrival. Wouldn't you know, the day she went into labor a huge snow storm hit. They didn't have a car so my dad hopped on the bus and it took him almost all day to get to my mom.

I wrote this villanelle when I gave my poetry-writing students this form to try. I have a book of prompts and randomly picked one. It turned out to be: On the day I was born. (A villanelle is a poem that repeats line one at the end of stanzas 2 and 4 and in the 3rd line of the last stanza. It also repeats line three at the end of stanzas 3, 5, and the last stanza. Besides those repetitions, there are two rhymes: all lines 1 and 3 rhyme and all lines 2 rhyme.)

The picture was taken on my parents' first anniversary.