Blackberry Bush by Anu Khosla
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Twenty toes numb inside icy waters. Four soles try for grip atop slippery-smooth algaed rocks. Stream slips by little calves. Triumphant sun rays push their way through bramble to grace spotless skin in summery dapples. Prickly-wild blackberry bushes along the banks will cobbler make. The air and the water are suspended in a passive aggressive fight over where to set the thermostat. Giggles and splashes catch on the canopy, untroubled. One wobbly step then another send us down the riverbed like the skeeters.
When her grandma starts to fall ill, she tells me:
“Eleanor has been talking about you!”
“Really?”
“She remembers you were such a happy child. She asked me if you still have your
sunny disposition.”
“Oh, god. I hope you lied?”
These days summer skies fill with pine tree ash.
Anu Khosla is an emerging writer based in San Francisco. She is a recent alumna of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Tin House. Her writing appears in BOMB, The Millions, Barrelhouse, Write or Die, The Racket, and elsewhere.
