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The Raspberry Room
by Karin Gottshall

It was solid hedge, loops
of bramble and thorny
as it had to be with its berries
thick as bumblebees. It drew
blood just to get there, but
I was queen of that place,
at ten, though the berries shook
like fists in the wind, daring anyone
to come in. I was trying so hard
to love this world—real rooms
too big and full of worry to
comfortably inhabit—but believing
I was born to live in that cloistered
green bower: the raspberry patch
in the back acre of my grandparents’
orchard. I was cross-stitched and
beaded by its fat, dollmaker’s
needles. The effort of sliding under
the heavy, spiked tangles that tore
my clothes and smeared me with
juice was rewarded with space,
wholly mine, a kind of room out of
the crush of the bushes with a
canopy of raspberry dagger-leaves
and a syrup of sun and birdsong.
Hours would pass in the loud buzz
of it, blood made it mine—
the adventure of that red sting
singing down my calves, the place
the scratches brought me to: just
space enough for a girl to lie down.

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