I am in my mother’s garden, and I am not wearing any shoes. We are picking strawberries.

The ground under my feet is dry and crumbling, parched in the sun. This space is overgrown with weeds, and cluttered with old fence posts and curling wooden boards.

We didn’t plant strawberries this year, but somehow they are here anyway. The patch is thick, and wide, and it rambles.

I balance on my heals, close to the earth, and reach out my hands for the berries… bright red, all the way down.

I talk and she listens. I try to tell her what is wrong, and I think she almost understands.

Two opposing things are true at the exact same time. I am more grounded that I’ve ever been, and I am also impossibly lost and shaken and I am so frightened.

I am filled to the brim with a sensation that something is horribly wrong in the world, that something bad is going to happen.

I feel as though the entire universe is hovering on the brink of something I can’t name.

I am picking strawberries.

I hope it’s a good evening, and I love you.