PAD Day 29: Taylor's Sweater

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem titled "Until ________."

NPWM: "Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs....[W]e’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title."

PSH: "Write non-stop for 3 minutes about whatever comes in to your head. Draw a line down the center. Number it section a and section b. Choose one section. Using most if not all the words in that section to make a poem. You can’t use any of the words in the other section but you can add any words other than them to create a new poem." (Judy England-McCarthy)

These are the words that were the result of prompt #3. They sort of became a "word bank" and an "anti-word bank." I did eliminate smaller words that I felt didn't need to be eliminated or included, like the, it, and, on, etc.

USE (list B):
comfortable behold high school sweater indicate area expertise mine maroon gold marching band after life
DON’T USE (list A):
open buttoned everybody least one big letter sewn football gymnastics chess club applique lyre give sweetheart time who would 

I chose Taylor Swift's word "cardigan," the title of her lead single from folklore, her first of two album releases from 2020. (I'm no Swiftie, but I thought those two albums were some of the best music I heard that year.) My free writing prompt was influenced by the word, but I tried not to let the lyrics of the song directly influence the writing. I melded the two title prompts by including both "until" and "cardigan" in my title. 

Until the Cardigan Was Lost
 
Behold the 60s high school sweater,
emblazoned with some alphabetical emblem,
a prize for any girlfriend whose guy’s area
of expertise was usually sports,
a garment she would wrap around herself
as though it were him, comfortable and caring,
warmth that could be adjusted, fastened shut
or not, a knitted billboard indicating
that she was spoken for by a desirable fellow.
How many of those sweater-pledges really lasted?
 
Mine was maroon and gold, the school colors,
awarded for marching band, not the most enviable
of high school credentials, and though there were girls
in my universe I could imagine wearing it,
it wasn’t to be. My true love didn’t appear until later,
after that cardigan was lost, yet somehow
we still both became comfortable and cozy,
and life went on.