i had no apple for mister when i rode this a.m. but on the way i had a windfall and arrived with a bag-full. i thought again about the woman who stayed in an abandoned farmhouse eating nothing but apples until the apples were gone and then she too was, gradually, unbelievably, even though she imagined a lover coming to find her, and there were people right across the street. i want that story to have a good ending, but after the fall idyll it was a desperate end measured in windfall apples. it didn't happen like a story, but it was. for a while i imagined living a secret life in an abandoned farmhouse eating apples and dreaming. once i was on gabriola island wandering the fire roads and found a small abandoned house in a clearing with an open door and a snug bed made just for me, or somebody, and an orchard outside the window still producing gnarled apples and humble welcome, long after the old inhabitants fled as ghosts or opportunities. i think of these two things when i think of apples. and other things. all stories with apples come together. mister eats one most days, a scrumptious apple story. i think there was some secret peace for the girl before she died, i want to think she felt apple love, lacking human love, sustained over many moons, and i wonder if that was just the place she was intended to stay to her end, even though she was released from an asylum, or institution, say, even if she was running away with no destination, even if she was waiting obscurely for rescue. she found a place with apples, paper and something to write with, and about. she wrote a diary.  in there, something about the commons, existence, seeking love, fleeing hunger, windfalls dwindling, inevitability, a question while freezing over a heat duct with a weak pilot light for heat, ending before spring returning in apples.