From workshop today:

Prompt: Write a piece about an apple.

Apple. Apple strudel, apple cake, apple cider, apple pancakes, apple juice, apple, apple, apple....

If I never see another apple I'll be happy. How do they stand it up here?

My mother thought this would be a good idea. I've spent the last three months with her sister and family here in Up State New York where I find it cold and wet and incredibly full of stupid apples. Their scent is sharp and pervasive because the atmosphere is too still, too self-contained, too little in the way of outside influence. They don't believe in video games and I'm lucky to get on the computer for a 30-minute stint when the phone line works. Which it doesn't when it rains and it rains so much.

Of course this isn't how things were supposed to turn out. After a month or so I was supposed to get used to the wind in my face, and develop healthy "apple cheeks" along with a new attitude that would make Mother's job of rearing me a breeze. Instead I've grown to resent my mother who can't be a real mom until she's real to herself, and my aunt for trying to fix it all when she doesn't even know what the problem is. No one listens long enough. They just want to talk.

There is my cousin Simone, who likes to be called Siren, only she'll never tell her parents that. We have a bit of a common thread between us, but I act on impulses whie she just dreams. Maybe, in the next eight weeks, I can change that.