I’d like to think that blackberry jam makes all the heartbreak, the abuse, the horrible eviscerating misery of life worthwhile. I’d like to think that at the gate between life and death there’s always a piece of buttered toast slathered richly with blackberry jam full of the possessive spice of yellow-jacket sting, wild mint pollination reaching the palate as nothing more than a half expressed wish, all the perfume of papery blossoms crumpling under a hot sun, and that feral berry flavor that continually eludes cultivation.
I’ve hit the ultimate awkward and yet privileged age: the smack dab middle of life expectancy.
I can’t talk openly of the things that truly depress me because of the living, I can’t talk openly of the things that terrify me, because of the dead.
I like it when people don’t pretend they’re immortal. I like it when people recognize how their lives can go from scripted to river-sunk in a matter of minutes.
River-sunk is my spirit animal.