Love for a Blueberry
Katie Wang
The girl enters the garden and promptly seeks out her
closest parallel. Her cherubic compatriot floats in indigo
clusters, among crinkled leaves that converse with
lukewarm drafts; together they murmur a welcome,
as the girl stoops to their eye-level. She examines
with an almost-precocious prudence--
the kind that has been freshly learned from schoolteachers
and science class, and seems to beg to be shown off—marvels
as the moisture that coats her fingertips (and the rest
of her small sticky body, for that matter) smudges sheeny blue
the fruit’s formerly lusterless skin. She relishes in its rotundities,
the velvety blue ruff that marks its surface. Staring at it,
she feels as though she too is being looked at. The eye
at the center of the berry is soft but unblinking. Eager,
or more, impatient, she splits it. Her yellowy-white
crescents of fingernails are turned reddish
purple, as though having been bruised, but they remain
unnoticed. What takes precedent is the girl
has seen the newly-revealed cross section of spring green before her,
flushed slightly mauve at its round edges. She,
having confirmed her theory, begins her primary objective,
plucking and placing the fruits in the pencil-yellow plastic colander
beside her. By the time of her departure, her hands are heavy
with berries and her eyelids with the heat of the sun.
In such a short time, she has already forgotten
so much, thoughts of syrupy pancakes and naps
curled up on the cool leather of a couch supplanting
her initial revelations of the morning. She passes on
the bright container of berries to the grey-haired man beside her
and continues, using tight fists to wipe drowsiness from her eyes.
She begins to forget this insignificant summer day. The man,
however, will not make such a mistake. He thinks
he will never forget this,
the vines that sprawled dreamily along the cream-slatted walls of the approaching home,
the grassy knoll that retreated in the pair’s now shadowy wake,
the gentle weight of the sweaty palm clasped within his own wrinkled one,
this little glimpse of a violet-tinted childhood, and the girl,
the only one who could turn the blue of this memory sweet,
for whom the details of this afternoon and the face beside her, will soon fade,
are already fading, as quickly as the juice stains on her palms.
closest parallel. Her cherubic compatriot floats in indigo
clusters, among crinkled leaves that converse with
lukewarm drafts; together they murmur a welcome,
as the girl stoops to their eye-level. She examines
with an almost-precocious prudence--
the kind that has been freshly learned from schoolteachers
and science class, and seems to beg to be shown off—marvels
as the moisture that coats her fingertips (and the rest
of her small sticky body, for that matter) smudges sheeny blue
the fruit’s formerly lusterless skin. She relishes in its rotundities,
the velvety blue ruff that marks its surface. Staring at it,
she feels as though she too is being looked at. The eye
at the center of the berry is soft but unblinking. Eager,
or more, impatient, she splits it. Her yellowy-white
crescents of fingernails are turned reddish
purple, as though having been bruised, but they remain
unnoticed. What takes precedent is the girl
has seen the newly-revealed cross section of spring green before her,
flushed slightly mauve at its round edges. She,
having confirmed her theory, begins her primary objective,
plucking and placing the fruits in the pencil-yellow plastic colander
beside her. By the time of her departure, her hands are heavy
with berries and her eyelids with the heat of the sun.
In such a short time, she has already forgotten
so much, thoughts of syrupy pancakes and naps
curled up on the cool leather of a couch supplanting
her initial revelations of the morning. She passes on
the bright container of berries to the grey-haired man beside her
and continues, using tight fists to wipe drowsiness from her eyes.
She begins to forget this insignificant summer day. The man,
however, will not make such a mistake. He thinks
he will never forget this,
the vines that sprawled dreamily along the cream-slatted walls of the approaching home,
the grassy knoll that retreated in the pair’s now shadowy wake,
the gentle weight of the sweaty palm clasped within his own wrinkled one,
this little glimpse of a violet-tinted childhood, and the girl,
the only one who could turn the blue of this memory sweet,
for whom the details of this afternoon and the face beside her, will soon fade,
are already fading, as quickly as the juice stains on her palms.
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Katie Wang (Pitzer ’24) is a poet, as well as a lover of foliage, citrus, music that makes you cry, the moon, and all things cherry-flavored.
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