Raspberries

- Elena German (California, USA)

There are some things that never change

like the feeling of a cat’s whiskers against my legs

Or the softness of a fresh raspberry, plucked right from its thorny mother.

And in my darker days I remember

I have not eaten my bluest berry.

I have not stroked my softest cat, I have not climbed my highest hill.

I have not seen so much of my world I am only twenty years old

I will only be twenty years old for a little while longer.

It is all so finite and frustrating, because I will be 21 and I will be 20 and I’ll be twenty one until the day

I die, it will sit on my shoulders in memory and my mother and I will cry through it all.

I can’t believe we’ve been together so long.

My mother probably still has not eaten her bluest berry, maybe petted her softest cat- who’s to say.

She has yet to see her first daughter marry another first daughter, it will be a first for everyone

She has yet to see the raspberry-red sun set of that day, yet every day she sees the sun set and I bet she thinks of me

When we are together I am allowed to be a little girl. I can tell her about my pimple patches and the wedding veil I imagine for myself. I am four, I am ten, and I am twenty just a little longer.

She is my only mother and I am her only daughter

We share it in our darkest and our lightest days

Where I am the raspberry, and she is my thorny mother