the widow goes berry picking
by June Rockefeller
and the berries are ripe, tender. Swollen so full they’ll juice at the wrong touch. She palms them delicately, removing them from the vine like a surgeon. The bushes, her sterile room. Everything reminds her of her husband’s beating heart, picked from his body, planted in another. If only she could have held it. Coached it between one cavern and then next. Berries can live for a time while separated from the stem so sometimes she brings them with her: wandering the city, listening for what was familiar in the chests of strangers. At night it’s too quiet to rest and when she sleeps, she dreams only of more silence. They’ll grow themselves to death those little berries so she picks them, harvests anything she can.
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