They are not quite ripe, the gooseberries
growing behind Christie’s house,
but I pick them anyway and pop
the prickling pink globes
between my tongue
and the roof of my mouth,
oh sour round rush of surprise,
and I am a girl again, not quite ripe,
living in a country where I don’t speak the language
wandering the edge of the woods of the north
with a family that isn’t my own.
The mother, who later will shun me, shows me
how to pick and eat the gooseberries,
a fruit I have never seen before.
I learn to love them that instant,
something I can immediately translate with my tongue—
the marriage of sweet and terribly tart,
a flavor I know already by heart.
Greedy, greedy, my hands in a hurry,
I pull the gooseberries behind Christie’s house
into my mouth as if feeding the memory
of a longing to understand,
feeding it so I can better untangle its tethers
before the memory disappears again.