love, read, write

Once I was lazy and stepped into my shoe without proper care, which folded the fabric inside the heel tab. Every time I wear these shoes I can feel the lump against my Achilles' heel reminding me of the one rushed morning when I looked away and made an irrevocable change. It's damaged inside. I feel it as I walk. Just the right foot. Sometimes it feels as if I'm limping because of it, like the mistake is moving into my tendons. It bothers me a lot but I try not to think about it. I've noticed that the more I get used to it, the more this strange expectation grows: somewhere in my subconscious, I assume that my shoe will heal, that it is a part of my organism. That in the natural course of the world, the shoe will one day grow itself a new heel tab. I'll wake up one morning and I won't feel that fold anymore, the one hidden under the leather, the discomfort that is invisible to the world. But then I remember— it won't. Shoes are not skin. They don't heal.

My mother is picking blackberries from the wild bushes lining the park's sidewalk, plucking each one off the stem with meticulous care. She is still young. We are in the mid-2000s. The sun spills onto her face between the gnarly tree branches around us, blushing her cheeks under the summer heat. "It's cooler here," she says, "perfect for blackberries." I watch as she examines each fruit, knee deep in weeds, making sure to pick only the plump ones, the ones that bruise under the slightest pinch. Her thumb and index finger are turning purple, which she does not notice now but will later become a source of lament when she discovers it on our way back to the car. But of course it will stain, and so will the smear of crimson on the insides of my hands — palms and fingers and all — which I am now cupping together to receive my mother's harvest. She continues to pick, laboriously, passing them down into my seven-year-old hands. She hums a faint tune under her breath – something intimately familiar but just out of memory's reach. When I close my eyes, her hum becomes the breeze whistling through the branches, the soft wind that cools the sweat on my skin. I let it lift me off my feet. "It's cooler here," I hear her voice say again, further away now, somewhere below me on the park sidewalk. "Perfect for blackberries." It is nice. I want to stay. I imagine a cradling halo descending upon us, to keep the three of us untouched — her, the berries, and also me.

As always, though, I find a way to ruin things. In the darkness of my imagination, my mind wanders around the bushes, conjuring thorny branches and needle-like grass, thinking about the overripe berries smashed onto the ground under our feet, a creature waiting in the bushes. Something squirms in my hands.

I open my eyes. The berries are sinking rapidly into the wrinkles of my palms, pooling into a black liquid – ugly, viscous, profane. Guilt washes over me – I'd only looked away for a couple seconds – I want to hide it before my mother sees – before she emerges from the bushes again – and suddenly I am overwhelmed with the urgent desire to bring it to my face and pour it down my throat – to remove the evidence – a hot, thick syrup that I know will dribble down my chin, onto my shirt, in ugly splotches and trails of pinkish blood. I could swallow the berries whole, letting the seeds drop down my throat one by one, straight into the recess of my stomach. They would scorch my intestines. My lips would stain black. I blink. 

Nothing has happened. My mother is still humming, her back to my brief dilemma, and so continues the time, time which warps in and over itself. We are on the sidewalk, passing by the bushes again. "Blackberries!" my mother discovers, letting go of my hand. She enters the thicket. "Perfect season for them." She picks berries. I hold them. We are in an eternal June. There are years between us. At some point I am still carrying them, a mountain of berries now obstructing my vision, and my mother drops still another into my pruny hands. It rolls off the peak, falling to the ground just shy of my feet. My mother does not respond, instead turning back to the bushes, her aging profile furrowed in concentration. I wonder if she is trapped. Cursed. "Oh!" she says, suddenly, then turns to put one in my mouth. She watches me chew. 

"Is it sweet?" she asks.

And maybe this is where our thousand years began – with one selfish wish. It is that occasional blackberry that does it. Perfectly warm, devilishly sweet, and just a little bit sour — it is in that stupidly happy moment as I open my mouth to let my mother feed me, that I wish the eternity to stay just a little bit longer.

I was fourteen years old when I forgetfully took the bus home from school. I had made a promise to my mother that morning – that she'd pick me up right after my last class for a doctor's appointment, something that would later turn more frequent and more expensive. But I'd forgotten, and class had ended. The bell rang; I packed my bag hastily and ran to the bus, already teeming with kids; I clambered over knees and cross-aisle punches, clutching my backpack close to my chest as I made my way to the seat, excited to see my friends. The heat of late spring and teenage sweat hung over the air and I cut through it towards Adithya, Tara and Annie, who were already there, midway through a fervent discussion about a recent game release. They nodded to me. Annie moved over to make room. A light breeze entered through one of the few opened windows. Adithya blurted an outrageous 'would you rather' question that would occupy the rest of the bus ride home. I was happy. I loved Tuesdays, the one day a week I could take the early bus home– no after school clubs, just two o'clock's delightful circus, the moving theater of chaos and pure, unadulterated joy.

But this is fake. I do not recall any of this. My memory of this event, actually, is strangely omniscient. In fact, very little of the bus ride – the bit that I was actually there for – remains with me; instead, I recall a mythical episode, a story not mine. I have no certainty of what she looked like, what she said, what expression she wore on her face. But when someone says, "hey, remember that day your mom ran into the school?" – my mind plays a video, however impossible, that is crystal clear. I do. Yes, in fact I do remember when she ran into the school. The curtains of my mind unfold: she is La Pieta without child. She is bursting through the door, sobbing, while I was mid-argument on the school bus. Yes, I do remember. I see it: her face is red, her hair disheveled, and she grabs the first student she sees. In her dizzying paranoia, the world is falling, her child is dying, suffering in her absence. She cries out, barely distinguishable, "where is my daughter," grabbing shoulder after shoulder, a desperate wrest for information, shrinking with each croaking cry, until eventually a friend– someone I'm not even that close to, who later tells me what happened with a strange expression on her face – admits yes, watchfully, she took the bus though, didn't she?– but the answer is not convincing coming from another child, my mother has already known the answer the moment she entered the building– her daughter is dead. Me, on the bus, laughing at a provocative question, two stops away from our townhome complex, where our parking spot is empty– it is only a matter of time until she finds me at the back of a bathroom, disintegrating, she must see her daughter before the warmth runs out, must hold her body, draped over her mourning arms. She runs, and she runs. She trips, and her joints have become fragile, and she crumbles onto a school aide, who wrestles with her own prejudiced frustration to help a strange lady in need, extracts the necessary information – name, year – makes a few radio messages and a few static-decorated exchanges later, my mother is consoled, reconstructed with the information that I have been dropped off, was accounted for, and in fact I am unlocking our townhome door as this information is being transferred– the door clicks open, I take a step, I call cheerily into an empty home, "I'm home!" and a cold silence befalls me. The lights are all out. Through an open window I hear the elementary school kids squealing in the playground behind our unit. 

"Mom?" I call. My mother, miles away in the school parking lot, sobs alone in the driver's seat – of today, and more. 

The door remains ajar as I stand confused at the absence that rejects my excitement, until an eclipsing reality stiffens into my shoulders – and in my shock of realization I drop my bag at this precipice, frozen in the doorway only just beginning.