“Between the honeysuckles and the lilacs, a blackberry bush. The air there had a taste, thick in the mouth. It was my summer feast, piling berries, seeping juice beaded on the leaf, the stain of it on my skin. And the stamens of the honeysuckle just beyond, slipped gently from the heart of the flower, ran sweet over the tongue.“

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“Everything in the room slides towards you,

your density draws an orbit. You make fat jokes,

but I sprung from those solid ribs and while

kudzu pulls until tree, rock is in its trajectory,

captive and hidden, the canopy of green throws wide

outlandish loveliness, the landscape alien new. “

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“The grief I feel will not absolve this rite,

the ritual mine, a daughter’s debt and blight.

She likes chocolate, they say to one another,

to staunch the hemorrhaging from my lost mother. “

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