Here | snapshot poem

Once again, the lines are too long for the format, so I've done it as an image (click to bring it up larger.) The text, with broken lines, is below the cut:

This week was "a novel prompt": Make a list of 10 or so words - the final words from chapters of a book of your choice - and then write a 10- to 20-line poem using those words.

My words: you, release, today, transformation, asleep, anymore, language, grace, rest, religion, here, palm, from Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia.

I'm also, as you can see, still playing with line lengths.

Birch trees thicken with snow; the landscape out this window is sugared.
Everything retreats to silence. I don't love you
anymore. It's all hardened, inside these thickening limbs, these stiffening
joints. Hardened to ice, inflexible and cold.

I've become brittle, sharp, and empty. My dreams are wisps, ghostly
and vacant of feeling. They pass through me like
breath on a freezing day. There is no space in me for religion, for rest,
for grace; no hope of transformation. It is all

illusion. You, my passion, my love: illusion. This body -- I stare at the palm
of my hand -- illusion. I am always asleep.
This language, so thin, so transparent: illusion. I release you now. Today,
I release you. You, this day, this release: illusion.