By T Davis
There are thorns in this blackberry pie.
Her apron is dark from the juice. She kneads and presses the wrinkles away. Her fingers are bloody.
The pie sits in the window, breathing. The flies found it, and nothing will bring it back to the condition it was in when she pulled it out of the oven, warm and sweet.
“Your fingers,” he says, but his fork is already in his mouth. His eyes are bright. She watches him. He does not notice.
She stands unblinking in the fading evening light. He tries to smile. Her lips are somber, her fingers red.
Colorful metaphors, but I fail to make a connection between blood and blackberries.
I do but probably only because I pruned my blackberry bushes yesterday.
I don’t understand this story at all. Someone help me because I like the imagery but can’t put it all together to where it makes any sense in terms of a coherent story.
What am I missing?
I love the metaphor. I think the first line is the key to it all.
I also think that even if you don’t understand it, there’s still beauty in it. It’s art.
It occurs to me that tthe opening sentence could also be used as the last sentence.and tie the whole piece together with a stronger ending.
I would like to what the author thinks about that idea.
Hi Dante,
Thank you very much for your feedback!
I considered ending with the line that currently stands as the first line but decided against it because I wanted that first line to set the tone for the piece. I felt that the piece would have suffocated a bit were I to repeat the line at the end, and I didn’t like how it felt unanchored starting without that line.
What do you think?
I too am intrigued by this piece as I can’t get a handle on exactly what is going on? No bad thing that you’ve generated such discussion, T Davis. But I think this piece is perhaps overly opaque. Is the blackberry pie with thorns real or is that the metaphor that has been alluded to?
Hi everyone,
Thank you for all of your feedback!
The thorns are both metaphorical and literal in the sense that the pie is a metaphor for their marriage (I realized after reading your feedback I could have made some different decisions to make this relationship more clear, so thank you!) and the piece describes on multiple levels how it started one way and ended very differently.
Does this help?
Again, thank you very much for reading and commenting!