Blackberries

Blackberries

Crawling through cool tunnels between the canes, grass soaking through your jeans, dodging thorns and hunting berries in their fat clusters, hanging thick as grapes, but softer, so soft they dissolve on fingertips, they have to be taken, sweet and bleeding, on the tongue, like a lover whose own skin was broken once, or more than once, who can never forget that pain, it comes back sometimes, shuddering strong, something like pleasure the memory that rips the covers off who you are now and lays you raw before the person you want to have and the person you want to be, sobbing fear you try to bury and wish would go away but it never does, you can only hope to shield your lover from the spines and offer up the tart black fruit of who it made you, hope the harvest is worth the work and all those ragged scars.
 
 
Previously published in Kudzu