In my head I devour you like a jar of homemade wild raspberry jam. Slick gelatin surface against lips and tongues. Sensual collapse of berries plucked from thorny bushes our bodies shock explosion. I kiss you so hard our lips bruise like the skin of fruit. I stick hard in your mind afterward, like a seed caught between your teeth. A perpetual ache your tongue searches to dislodge, then misses the moment it's gone.


To make a simple raspberry jam mash 3 cups of berries in a sauce pan together with 3 cups of sugar. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and beat with a wire whip or mixer for 6 minutes. Pour into jars and allow to cool. If not canning, keep stored in refrigerator.


I eat a raspberry scone as I sit in an outdoor cafe sipping coffee at Covent Garden. I sit alone and watch the people bustling by. Mostly tourists--some with bored older children in tow--some with young kids running wildly through the courtyard screeching like newly uncaged animals. The street performers croon. The sky broods typical English grey cloudy madness of occasional sun breaks that make me smile and squint my right eye, and I think about home. The taste of my mom's wild raspberry jam. The smell of my grandmother in summer. I think about home, but I don't want to be there. I write in a notebook with a cheap pollack inspired cover about the cinnamon color of the coffee. The best cup I've ever had right at this moment. He'll arrive soon, I write into the blank pages with black ink. Sick with anticipation. I notice the hard metallic chair against my spine. Press against it and bite my lips, hard.


Raspberry refers to the woody brambles and also to the fruit it bears. The berries can range in color from red to black, but also appear at times yellow. The small subdivisions of the fruit are called drupes or drupelets. These berries are edible. Raspberries are thought to have originated in Eastern Asia. They are high in antioxidant vitamin C and dietary fiber. Raspberry is also a noise made by vibrating the extended tongue and the lips while exhaling. It is a sound usually used to express contempt or to express displeasure. Some synonyms for this expression are boo, hoot, hiss, razzing, snort, bird.


I want to put my raspberry with your raspberry to make sweet wild raspberry intoxication. Stain the sheets with the dissoluble languor of this sunshine afternoon pretending to be summer. Add sugar and legs and eye lashes and arm pits and the tympan of the ears. Beat slow drum driving stretch the skin and shine glow laughter into every corner of this room raspberry day-light setting slow on us.