Early morning dew captures our reflections; smiling with us like mini mirrors against green leaves.
We laugh as we listen to the language of the past, my mother in law telling stories of my husband as a boy.
Filling our buckets with blueberries we talk of owning land one day where we all can live and grow together
My mother in law does not know, as she speaks, that instead of owning land she will be buried in it, that her children will sit at her bedside angry and crying as she dies from an infection that has poisoned her blood.
She does not know that the heroin needles she shares will make her body swell until she is unrecognizable, that she will never pick blueberries with her grandchildren
She does not know that every time I pick blueberries I will think of her in that hospital room, the dark blue of her veins, the fluid filling her body
So for now she laughs with us in the dew of the morning and we sing Van Morrison with the handheld radio the neighbors brought to the field.
The Salal Review - Volume 22 