Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The secret to space poppies is harvesting the right part”

The secret to space poppies is harvesting the right part. I should know. When teaching on Seti Beta goes to recess in the early summer, I switch to my more lucrative career, harvesting. The seeds contain powerful opiates, conveying all their medicinal and jovial attributes. The petals and the stem each have their own pitfalls. The petals have some quantity of opiates, but also contain some oxidized compounds which, in my opinion, lead to the having of a bad time. Unscrupulous vendors will include the petals in their product, knowing that the vast majority of customers don’t know the difference. I like to think that a more pleasant high leads to customer loyalty. The stem contains potent poisons. Homicidal vendors include them.

They aren’t really related to poppies, nor do they look like them. They’re actually enormous lizard plants. But they yield an opiate, and they have plant parts. Part of the trade is keeping the lizards happy. When they’re unhappy, they bite, and they can accumulate more oxidized compounds. I have three flesh fingers on my left hand, although at least I had plenty of painkiller on hand. Some say that the industry is in danger, with the rise of bioengineering and targeted therapies. This is why I support the rise of pleasure purchases. They are the future.

(This prompt is a bit scattered. I barely had the time to finish it during a lull in teaching in a crowded noisy room. But I really think it’s worthwhile to sit down and write on command. We must learn to accept that not all words we write are golden, but if we do write, there will be more golden words than if we don’t. As Wayne Gretzky said, we miss 100% of the shots we don’t take. And perhaps, one evening when we think we’re brain-dead, we will write something that we love in the morning.)