In cherry season I laid long afternoons on the wooden bench in the backyard (not waiting) and one day the cherries were not quite ripe and the next day they were bruised from falling and the birds had taken a bite out of each one.
In blueberry season I took a carefully plotted afternoon to pick ten pounds of blue gold, not counting the pounds I put away inside me without even using my fingers. The heat was a hustle and I barely had time to eat the berries before they went mushy.
I think strawberry season passed me right by. But I have money enough now to buy them.
Blackberry season came early this year, sweet surprise along my path one day. We picked until our stomachs turned purple, my hands awake with red spiderweb scrapes. But when we got home you were too full to eat any.
It was picking blackberries that I saw the scar.
Dirt where once there was meadow.
Meadow I had walked across each afternoon in tenth grade singing great love songs from the moulin rouge soundtrack.
And it occurs to me that I no longer belt love songs into the wind.
And it occurs to me that soon the meadow will no longer be.
And it occurs to me that soon the apples will ripen, boughs bent with heavy pregnancy, on the edge of the nearly not-meadow.
