Berry picking Mitch Porter

What is this great life I am given? What am I doing? How am I living?

I remember a photo somewhere. My teenaged sister and I, sunlit glare, backseat of a pickup, ragged seatbelts, grinning over green plastic baskets piled high with Mississippi blueberries.

I don’t know if I could find that picture again now. My sister never much liked it. I never much liked blueberries then either.

Now maybe I do.

I was happy. I am living. I want to run with myself through this life. Set it up again. Strap us in. Take the picture. Sunlit glare. Let me mean it this time. Let me gorge myself on blueberries, a black bear in July, ramshackle and fat and happy. Let me stick my messy little fingers over all the pieces of my life. I want berry-stained thumbprints in these pages I write on, on the walls, through the pages of every book I’ve ever read. Through all the ones I never will.

I want my fingerprints all there. I was there. I lived. Look at me. I fed myself on blueberries. Shook down the bush for all it was worth. I was happy. I am living.

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