Leather Crafts

"Applesauce"
I liked how the starry blue lid of that saucepan lifted and puffed, then settled back on thin hotpad of steam, and the way her kitchen filled with the warm, wet breath of apples, as if all the apples were talking at once, as if they's come cold and sour from chores in the orchard, and were trying to shoulder in close to the fire. She was to busy to put in her two cents' worth talking to apples. Squeezing her dentures with wrinkly lips, she had to jingle and stack the bright brass coins of the lids and thoughtfully count out the red rubber rings, then hold each jar, to see if it was clean, to a window that looked out through her backyard in to Iowa. And with every third or fourth jar she wiped steam from her glasses, using the hem of her apron, printed with tiny red sailboats that dipped along with leaf-green banners snapping, under puffs of pale applesauce clouds scented with cinammon and cloves, the only boats under sail for at least two thousand miles.