okay, THESE berries I picked with my own two hands (pictured)

You do not chomp these berries. You do not inhale them or devour them. You do not hurry these berries.

We misread the sign at the grocery store. Organic Blueberries 97¢. A half-pint of pesticide-free, God's-best-work blueberries for ninety-seven cents? Sounds too good to believe. But we believed. We believed it four times over.

The receipt on our dining table showed us that each little container of unconventional berries cost $5.97. Five dollars and ninety-seven cents.

This one quart of blueberries cost us $24.

So you do not hurry these berries. You set the berry before you. You carefully, thoughtfully bathe the berry in clean water. You greet the berry and dry it gently, like you would like to be toweled off when you are old and weak: with dignity.

You transport the berry to your lips. You invite it inside, and if it obliges you, you thank it. You say, "No, thank you," and you welcome it to your tongue.

If you must do more than wait for it to dissolve of its own will, going gently into that good night, you press the berry between your muscly tongue and the smooth roof of your mouth––don't waste any on the untasting teeth!––and massage the flesh, the skin, the juice of the berry.

When the organic blueberry is pleased, when the berry acquiesces, when the berry bursts, you make the berry totally your own and you swallow it and you remember your ten cents as a purple dream down the throat.

moves and removes