Today’s prompt: Brainstorm ten words related to snow and ten words related to oil. Write a poem that uses one word from the “snow list” in the first line and one from the “oil list” in the second line and so on until all the words are used. This was hard and time-consuming and I can’t say I’m proud of the result.

In a flurry of activity,
she begins cooking a meal
for him, the man she’d chosen
from many, anointed as the one.

As she scans recipes, her thoughts drift
to long days in the olive groves,
followed by chilly Italian nights
and the moon-borne sheen of his hair.

She shivers in frigid remembrance.
How slippery her memories seem.
If only to freeze for an instant
one memory, an unguent for loss.

Her thoughts, a blizzard of memories
spill unbidden before her eyes.
Like the fall of leaves in autumn,
slick in their recollection.

Her movements have now become glacial.
The wok she holds, heavy and cold.
Her thoughts now a virtual whiteout and
there is no balm for her soul.