I picked blackberries off bushes
with eager hands, hoarded them into me
as if they were gold or wishes, draped
across the still-green branches
of early fall. I shoved them into my mouth
until everything turned bruise-purple:
until my fingers and lips turned,
until my teeth turned and the tip of my nose
and even my stomach
must have looked like a plum, swollen
with those small-beads. Even the sky
flushed florid, royal between stretched-
out clouds. In that dark thicket, the bitter
sweetness of sunset not yet on my tongue—
I hadn’t found a sour one.


From At the Table of the Unknown (Moon Tide Press, 2019).
Used here with permission.