When there were no maps for this
It was the summer of 1988. I remember us riding our bikes down the long dirt road flanked by fields. It was a hot, dry day. We were adventuring. We stopped at the pick-your-own berry farm and meandered out into the endless rows. No buckets in our hands, we pulled the big ripe strawberries from the vines and put their strawberry bodies in our mouths. I had never tasted anything like it, the warmed sweetness.
The sun drew salty lines across our sweaty necks. We were laughing. We were quiet. We were together and apart.
We bought no strawberries that afternoon. In the swoon of our moment, our bellies stole everything. I don’t remember feeling guilty. The berries’ flavor lingered making my mouth a cathedral to their taste. My heart felt the same next to her, shaped by the wanting.
When we rode on, our bikes skidded off onto the dry dirt road and righted themselves, hazy dust flying. And then I hit a patch of something gravelly, my front wheel went out, and the ground came hard and fast. The skin on my leg scraped raw, bright strawberry-red. She turned back towards me.
The farmer driving by in his steely pickup truck stopped to see. “That’s what you get for stealing my strawberries,” he said. Punished, not punished? I don’t remember. We rode off. She tended to my wounds.
During that long hot summer together we never touched. Wrapped in an aching for her I couldn’t express, my heart became an empty bell ringing. And after our time apart in the fall, when we came together again, there was nothing left of the wanting.