Berries
by Joanna Pinto
The blackberries grow over the graves in the sailors' graveyard. The thick bushes wrap around stone anchors and granite coiled ropes, the leaves obscuring the dedications in English, Latin, and Norwegian.
Children gather the berries and take them home to be baked into crumble with apple, buttery and sweet.
In the morning, they tell their parents about their dreams. Of creaking stinking wooden ships and metal ships that creak too but differently, of faraway islands and the meaning of sailors' tattoos. Of the feeling of salt water in blistered hands. Of the pain and hardship but also the freedom, except for those whose freedom is owned by other men.
Their parents laugh at the funny things that children come out with.
The berries glisten in the graveyard, fat and nourished where the bones of the sailors sleep.
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, June 17th, 2021
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