Gulls like white handkerchiefs. How I wish I’d written that line. It is a gorgeous simile. Alas. It is not mine. It is a line from Isabel Allende’s new memoir, The Sum of Our Days.

This week, your prompt is fairly simple. Make comparisons. Notice the world around you. Turn your observations into similes (and metaphors).

As Webster explains simile: Likeness, comparison, a figure of speech in which two dissimilar things are compared by the use of like or as (as in cheeks like roses).

Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word for one idea or thing is used in place of another to suggest a likeness between them (as in the ship plows the sea).

Write long lists of comparisons. Long, trailing lists. Try to avoid clichés at all costs. (99 Cents; $1.39; $3.56; spare no expense!)

After you’ve spent a few days collecting, choose your favorite(s) and use them in a poem. Use a simile to begin a poem. Use a simile to inspire an entire poem. Use a simile as a poem title. The words are your oyster.

There. Easy as pie. Easy as wind in your hair. Easy like Sunday morning!

~Jill.

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Come back starting next Monday after midnight (CST) to share your poetic similes or metaphors or anything at all.