stained skin
By Jacob Taylor
our father grew blackberry bushes from clippings,
after he bought his first set from the nursery,
filling every corner, between the lanky crabapple trees
that bloomed white in the spring and offered flowers
for backyard weddings. the blackberries overtook our pets’
unmarked graves and stretched above our eight-foot fence.
when we ate all our hens, our father staked slender stalks where they shat
and the bushes crawled onto concrete, beneath
our trampoline. berry picking, like peach picking, became a family
activity. instead of itchy arms from peach fuzz,
broken blackberry sacs bled in our hands—their bush thorns torn
from their genes by selective breeding.
the smallest fingers stained cheeks and shirts,
left trails of red-purple prints
in photographs. the old house sold, our father plants his de-thorned clippings
across his new yard, filling every spare corner. he picks berries
with his new wife, his new children, his new neighbors, and when I visit,
berries stain your tiny fingers.
Jacob Taylor is currently completing a master’s degree at Utah State University. Their fiction, nonfiction, and poetry is published and forthcoming in Sink Hollow, Sugar House Review, and the Southern Quill.
Artwork Source: “Flowers,” Kate Efimochkina
Artist Statement: A fictional flower painted in a moment of desperate passion this February.
Kate Efimochkina, graphic artist, writer. In her works she tried to show a chaotic beauty of nature and the impulses that are hidden in it.
The Turning Leaf Journal 