we are cheerful of cherries

I have spent the day in intimate conversation with ripe fruit.

Sounds heady. It is. The scent is intoxicating, alluring, exhilarating- everything we grasp for when making our perfumes and fail.

I have handled a thousand cherries, their soft little bodies rolled in my hands.

I’ve removed their pits and stripped them of their stems…

Undressed strawberries fresh from the field and tasted them, received their sweetness on my fingers and lips… I am stained.

I’ve preserved them for winter,

when the landscape no longer gives us such juicy gifts as these,

and summer is a memory.

We will go on being stained and entranced by them.