Port: The port of call was 17. She was looking pretty and lean. In her white jeans and light blue tank with a butterfly on her breasts. I watched the world go ’round on her dark-lensed Ray-Bans – sailboat loaded by deckhands, speedboat misbehaving on sunken badlands, sun hanging over the white sands.

Pressed: She pressed the soft inner flesh of the orange against the rotating mound of the juicer. Her knuckles were white. She was standing on the tips of her toes. And the bangs she had just tucked behind her left ear fell in front of her eyes. The juice flowed through the built-in strainer and into the collection glass, ready to be consumed by our hungry little monsters (the children). It was 9am on Saturday morning. Our family was together. There were no youth sporting events or men’s golf leagues to attend. It was just the four of us sitting on the plush pillows of our kitchen nook, eating pancakes and fresh-squeezed orange juice while watching the rain trickle down outside.

Playground: The playground at Pathfinder School – my elementary school in Traverse City, Michigan – wasn’t the typical open field or lot with over-sized toys. It was the wood and all of its components. The myrtle-covered hills, the overgrown wander paths, the elder trees, the soft blanket of brown leaves and the black dirt a farmer would love. I could explore and wander about. I could play games. I could even get lost if I dared to do so.

Dense: The denseness of the flesh of the Honeycrisp apple surprised him as he eased his butcher’s knife through the varying diameter of its body. Still shaken by the rusty blue pick-up truck clipping his dog earlier in the afternoon, his hand was unsteady. The black carbon handle of the knife, which he had just rinsed in the double-basin stainless steel Kohler kitchen sink, was wet. The ball of his right hand, located just below where the index finger joined his palm, was the primary source of pressure on the top side of the knife handle. He leaned into the motion and pressed down harder. His eye twitched. His nose tingled. He sneezed. And then, unknown to him, his hand pressed the knife down through the apple and the index, middle and ring fingers of his left hand. The world seemed to freeze in place as he stared at the grotesque still life depicting two halves of an apple laying open on the antipodal points of what used to be a whole apple, three detached fingertips aligned behind the left apple half and a pool of blood seeping across the backdrop like anti-gravity curtains in an upside down theater.

Link to OneWord.com, which prompts me with each of the words and provides one minute to write about that word. Sometimes I run long.