A Very Blue Berry

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It's November 18th, a Wednesday: 1am. This is a letter to the home that will surround me soon.

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I've been going through it for the last month and a half, and I thought I'd tell you about all of that in depth, but I'm not going to. You see, I spent weeks writing a blog post about all of it--it'd become so long that it could've been a novella. But I stopped when my feelings about everything that had happened, changed. In my last blog post, I told you that I'd tell you an old love story. Instead, I fleshed it out for myself and released it in a different way. You're not going to hear that one; it's gone. But you can hear a new one.

Gale Forman told me to write a letter to someone, so I wrote to my new home, warning him of my wild tendencies and promising him love. It's raw and real and unedited.

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A Very Blue Berry

Berry Home,

This summer, when I read Lore Olympus, something similar to the feeling that I get when I add something to my “AllyBaby Aesthetic” board on Pinterest was had. A deep resonating with

Persephone.

Persephone, you reek of orchids--

Daisies, tulips- long-stem roses

How’d you get so--sweeeet?

Has it always been this easy--

Or are you-just-bein’ meaaan?

Hey swing on-by ta-my apartment,

Know those footsteps--hear you comin’

Who’s the one that holds you-baby,

Even as your-world is shakin’

And even as I’m breaaakin’?

Oh, I got your folded piece of paper,

Saw the few words-that you laid there!

I guess you’re doin’ me a favor!

I guess maybe I’ll see you later

A guess is all I geeet.

Persephone, you screwed me over.

Wish I’d stole you out of nowhere

How’d you get so--sweeeet?

How’d you make it looks so easy

When you knew it’d never beeee?

I’ve felt some incomprehensible tie to that name, that pink Goddess of Spring that’s all at once innocent, naive, and melancholic. I read the books about her and searched for poems--Persephone to Hades.

She and I are the same story.

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And this is who will clothe you--the Goddess of Spring who was taken to the Underworld. She will bloom and grow, bloom and grow in your arm that faces the sunset: curling G’s and H’s in her blue book; dreaming, reflecting, and looking for the moon out the window; lying on the ocean carpet with a beaming smile. She will cry on that same carpet when she misses home, familiarity, old love, her mother. I know that this choice will bring polarity.

To leave behind everything is the only real option, but it’s exactly what she wants; stronger than that, it calls to her. This is the ribbon sewing up the binding on her last chapter. The houses that she called home--the people, libraries, and classrooms, too--will never be returned to.

I am leaving behind my leaves with this season. You’ve always been covered in snow in my mind. It’s chilly up where you are, a White Christmas, and I’ve been dreaming about it for ages now. My memories will keep alongside the apple and rusty leaves that are put to sleep by snow-blankets.

It’s always been a habit of mine to swim in emotion. When I’m inspired, I kiss an eight hour sleep and easy tomorrow, Goodbye, now. I’m sure we’ll see each other another night, and drink the wine of photographs and prose-y, posie poems until the last sip puts me to sleep, fulfilled. When I’m heartbroken, I drive past every place that holds every memory of that ache, and then--to every other that aches for some other loss. I listen to old voicemails and write novels in my mind of could have’s and why didn’t it’s. With a tool that’s shaped like antlers, I unpick every seam that I’ve sewn to hold me together. And when I stop for a breath, I’m shaking and the front of my sweater has been coaxed into dampness from eye raindrops. I spend the following days waking up from vivid dreams in cold sweats. It’s dangerous, all of it.

But it’s my way.

There’s something beautiful and intoxicating about tasting every speck of day as if it were Italy’s ichor of tiramisu. The melancholy that you see is a result of my intrepid indulgence in every taste of honey, illicit kiss, or forlorn rhythm. The naivety is what one must have to continually return to such things.

Loved ones have called me Berry for eighteen years. I’ve named collections of everything Blueberry all of this time. And now, I think I’ve just begun to understand why I’d make blueberry muffin batter and eat with a spoon at two in the morning after I’d sneak out to kiss my summer fling, why I named my first indie playlist Blueberry Muffins, and this letter, today, A Very Blue Berry. It’s because, just as I am Persephone, I am a blueberry; a blue berry. The berry that I have been from birth has at times been a precious, classic, darling strawberry, growing from in a potted plant out front for picking and tasting as you water the flowers. I’ve had a remarkable streak as a cherry berry: undeniably red, rich, and palettable, something from the 50s. But I’ve always been blue at the end of the day. A berry is naive and a blue is melancholic.

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Homes eat what their people do, so I suppose that you’ll be a florilegium of golden moons and songs about Jane. You’ll have nights full of reading and white flowered candles, or conversations about secrets and misses, all at two in the morning. Every day, you will witness the extremes of a girl that partakes of the most consuming fruits.

You will be the first to know when she’s falling in love after you watch her pitter and patter in her room with squeals and giggles and falling on the floor when she gets home from that first date. You’ll see her write love letters, trying not to smudge the ink. Help her pick out which dress to wear to meet his parents. Witness the all-consuming, hurricane of love that she is exclusively capable of.

She really can’t help but feel everything in tens. Every survey question ends up being filled with five stars, not four or three.

You and I will love each other. I knew it when I stumbled upon you in search for a new home. Nothing had felt close to right, and then you appeared with a confirmation in the chest, We belong to each other. Within days, I was making the drive to see you and signing the lease. It fell into place seamlessly, and that affirmed it even more, We belong to each other.

I’m going to adore your nooks and take care of you. I will scrub your bathtub and spend time in each room, to see that they will all be filled with a warm and loved spirit. I’ll read on the silly, old couches in the living room and invite our roommates to watch Home Alone in there when they get home for the day. We’ll dig through our dresser drawers for our warmest, fleeciest jammies, and munch on peppermint bark. In the spring, I’ll use all of your spatulas and mixing bowls to bake strawberry shortcakes after church on Sundays, and kiss your cupboards goodbye before I walk over to give them to the neighbors. Some evenings, I’ll spend entirely in our room, watching the sky turn from baby boy to peach, to cotton candy, and then to bedtime. I’ll be thankful in my prayers for the wool coat around your walls that keeps us warm, and the new memories of that day. I’ll talk to you about my late-night ideas and listen to your hums. You are my family now.