i had a dream about you and
strawberries. not real strawberries: the sour,
pimpled berries that are never quite sold ripe
i mean their fanciful cousins: the pink, poreless
fruits who flood instagram aesthetic pages.
because in dreams you can have anything you
wish and if i could have anything i wanted i
would have you and strawberries. i tried to paint
this feeling into a picture but all my ideas come
out contorted on paper, so i ended up with an
outline of a character that didn’t capture your
warmth at all so now i’m writing this letter that
you’ll never read, trying to explain the rosiness
of the clouds and how i see you in my dreams
and how in my mind you tasted sweeter than
any strawberry and how in real life strawberries
are these fibrous green protrusions
encapsulating white, fleshy caves within them
they are never, ever sweet and leave a thorny
residue on your teeth long after the last berry
has been consumed.
Lady from Saint Mary by Kirsten Liang
