To bait the fruit flies, all we need is apple cider vinegar mixed with Dawn dish soap poured in the bottom of a glass, fitted with a paper funnel, wrapped with tape. The fruit flies appear at the edge of the funnel looking down, then make their way through the bottom, but can’t remember how to get back out of the hole. That’s it. They collect in a ring around the edge and in the morning we toss them in the grass. And it becomes a crude model of addiction I think, driving home from a long day at work when all I want is a beer and my lawn chair under the tree, out back: just me and the birds and the bugs and later, the bats, groups of ducks and geese headed south…the sound of distant cars swooshing like the tide going out, scraping me out, waiting for the first stars, the frogs…and later with the moon, a choked owl hoots, the sudden scream of death or longing that could be a coyote…something trapped, giving its last gasp…and I elbow Dawn, did you hear that…?

Categories: Memoir, prose

Tags: addiction, autumn poetry, journal writing, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer