I used Chatgpt to write this (again)

Three more AI-generated prompts that got the wheels turning and the juices flowing.

Letting our biggest enemy dictate what I write about by asking him for writing prompts! This is a good practice for getting out of a writing slump or as a warmup before a more intense writing session. I hope you enjoy!!

When I was in third grade I lost a stick in a field. Or, that’s how my mom would’ve recounted the tale, stifling laughter, the rest of my family listening to the day’s folklore over the clinking of utensils and squishing of watermelon between teeth. It was late August, the beginning of a new school year, and I was a wizard (or witch, according to the laws of gender, inescapable even at four feet tall). I have magical powers, I interjected, and the “stick” I lost while strawberry picking was actually my magic wand. It was very very important, and this was not a laughing matter, I explained over angry bites of corn on the cob.

We had been knee-deep in the strawberries, (the kind that look more like bracelet charms than fruit, that splatter when dropped from a distance) under the relentless evening sun, when I must have misplaced my wand amongst the undergrowth. I’d brought it with me, this stick from yesterday’s recess, in case there were other wizards to spar with amongst the rows of fruit, or a hex cast on the berries that needed my reversing. I was being responsible, prepared for anything, like a good witch should.

To my disappointment, there wasn’t much crime to fight amidst the vines, and the mortals doing the picking seemed agonizingly docile. So I forgot about my stick and got distracted by a dragonfly, because I was like nine.

The next Monday, at recess, the coven met by the foursquare to debrief the weekend’s events. I patted my pockets, checked my boots frantically, realized my wand was missing. My heart was beating out of my chest.

“When did you have it last?” Pragmatic Parker asked me, waving his own oversized and very much not-lost elm branch in my face. I told them about the strawberry field and the dragonfly and the jam I’d made with my mom afterwards, standing on a stool to reach the kitchen stove, stirring the red, bubbling mixture. I had it that day, I swear, I must’ve lost it.

Well, Parker said, real witches and wizards didn’t lose their wands, and I’d probably be kicked out of the coven because I didn’t take my powers seriously. When I got home, I cried, before my mom put some strawberry jam on an English muffin, my sister made me laugh really hard, and I rode my scooter to the end of the street.

Amelia told me she can shape shift. We were sitting crisscross applesauce across from each other under a chestnut tree when she told me this, in confidence, voice almost a whisper, like the lower branches were listening. Sometimes I want to be a jellyfish, or a door jamb, or an apricot, she said, and then I am one. I figured this was a metaphor for something I was too mortal to understand. Instead of asking, I listened to her recount tales of underwater quests like they were childhood memories, watching how her hand movements decorated her words, smiling when she smiled.

Amelia told me she’s going to open a bookstore in a tree house somewhere it never rains. There’s going to be a rickety ladder leading up to an entrance, but there are several other entrances, and none of them are the main one. Some of them are so high up you have to fly on the back of a Pegasus to reach them. Angry men are not allowed to shop at the treehouse bookshop, she tells me, and you pay for your books with blades of grass. There will be a rope pulley system, like a dumbwaiter, to lower your purchase to the ground, so then you can climb down the ladder with your hands free. When I rise accessibility (ladder as the only point of access) and environmental (grass as currency) concerns, she shoos me off, rolls her eyes, says all the pragmatists of the world are dying first in the apocalypse.

There’s a big freckle on Amelia’s left cheek, or maybe more of a birthmark, given its size. Only slightly darker than the rest of her skin, it has a cloud-like quality; an amorphous blob that seems to shift in form every time I look away and back again. She’s wearing earrings that are longer than her hair and seem to be made of dried lemon peels. I want to lean towards her and smell them, but I don’t.

Whenever I see Amelia, I’m instantly regretful for all the time, the many hours of every day, that I spend not seeing Amelia. I imagine what she’s doing then, when she’s not shape-shifting or sitting across from me; all the friends she talks to or how she carries herself in her room with the door closed. A group mourning her absence once she’s left the party, fawning over her magnetism, subconsciously reserving the stool where she sat in case of her return.

Amelia says whatever her brain thinks. This is not a problem, however, because her brain was drawn up by toddlers and then woven into existence by silkworms. It is everything light and good. She laughs when the wind blows the beach blanket into her body as she tries to lay in down in the sand, she shares her clothes, and her dinner, and leaves bracelets in people’s mailboxes. Men forget to fall in love with her because she treats them like family, keeping no secrets, retaining no mystery.

Amelia repels jealousy by exuding possibility. There is no need to want, because you can be like me too, her actions said. To be one of the many things her eyes took in in the course of a day, was to feel blessed by life, to feel invincible, to feel whole.

I’m sitting in a café’s back garden where two ladies are catching up but there’s also a guy sitting with his dog who ordered a pizza for himself (the guy, not the dog), and I’m the only one here besides them, and they are now all talking because the guy overhead something they said and chimed in and the women were, luckily for him, wine-tipsy and completely receptive. I feel like this little garden is too small, or I shouldn’t be here. I mean, I’m not part of this, and yet I feel compelled to contribute; like I’m being rude for sitting and typing on my laptop instead of offering my own anecdotes on “finding work in the industry after the SAG strike” despite having not only no opinion on the matter but no relevance to the topic entirely.

The conversation is impossible to ignore, I’d assume even for someone who is not a chronic eavesdropper, such as myself. Everyone is name dropping and complaining and shit-talking their spouses? The blonde woman makes earrings, and the brunette tells the man he should buy some for his wife, but he reluctantly admits his wife doesn’t have her ears pierced, in a tone like he’s confessing to marrying a child molester. It’s really not a big deal, I think, and thankfully the brunette voices my inner monologue. She says ear piercings are weird anyways, why poke holes in your body, and the blonde lady chirps up to defend her craft and her livelihood.

But that’s not her livelihood, apparently, because she actually works in film, or more specifically, “in commercials for twenty-five years and also on the production team for SNL”. I’m finding that everyone in New York City has either worked on SNL or knows someone who’s worked on SNL or has overhead a conversation in a café’s back garden involving someone who used to but now mostly sells overpriced jewelry on Etsy.

This blonde lady reminds me of the stepmom from Parent Trap, in more ways than one. And she feels unsafe to be around. When the man brings up someone they all tangentially know somehow (NYC is the smallest city in the world) and begins raving about her artistic capacity (and how shocking it was to discover this talent in her because she is so down to earth and mentions it so infrequently) the blonde lady is instantly reminded of her roommate from “adult art camp” and now the conversation is only about that.

When you get the stepmom from Parent Trap talking about Deena, her roommate from adult art camp, you don’t really have to worry about thinking of things to say in response, because she will just keep talking. I decided then that she was the perfect friend for an introvert, because she was allergic to silence and gaps in conversation and could spin one little unrelated comment into an entire diatribe recounting a two-week stint of forging earrings out of wrought iron with a seventy-year-old roommate.

Her description of Deena actually paints a lovely picture, and I think, I’d like to meet this Deena. She sounds like a simple woman, uninterested in stepmom’s espresso machine and essential oils and silk bathrobes and other trinkets, all seemingly unnecessary items to bring on a two-week immersive getaway anyways. The story is captivating, and I suddenly remember that sometimes the most insufferable people are the best storytellers because they’re used to commanding all the attention. They know when to lean in, when to pause for effect.

When this performative but entertaining three-way interaction comes to a close, its hours later and the sun is no longer shining on the little back patio we’re all occupying. I watch the women exchange information with the man, whose name they haven’t asked for until now, and down the dregs of their orange wine. It’s 2pm on a Wednesday. I want to be invited wherever they’re going next.