Once again I found myself in the company of the Thursdays Writing Collective, this time on the Third Floor of the Carnegie Centre, where the group regularly meets.

As with all guest writers, the sessions kick off with a writing prompt supplied by the guest in advance of their visit, after which members read what they wrote. From there, a talk and a reading by the guest, then more writing and reading.

The line I supplied was: “The sun rose like a headless pair of shoulders.” Some were “uninspired" by the line and wrote what they wanted, while others accepted it as a point of departure. Still others rewrote it. The prescribed time was five minutes.

Because guests are asked to participate, I came up with this:

The sun rose like a headless pair of shoulders. Without me. The sun rose without me.

For the past week I have been living at my sister’s. She and her husband have a farm in the Fraser Valley and sometimes I look after it while they are travelling. They travel a lot, my sister and her husband. Sometimes I wonder what they are doing with a farm.

My sister and her husband are doing nothing with their farm. Once upon a time someone grew corn there. After them, hops. When my sister and her husband took over, it hadn’t been farmed in decades.

Last year a man knocked on their door and asked if he could rent their land for three months. He was a film producer and he wanted to make a war movie.

The movie required a network of muddy trenches and originally my sister said no. When he offered her thirty thousand dollars and compensation for their lost crop, she said Yes, poppies.

So my sister and her husband are liars. Liars who travel. And have a farm.