Jordgubbe By Alyson Miller

By a lake in a town that has a name you kiss to say, we eat strawberries, fleshy jordgubbe in cardboard pots leaching sticky red. They taste only as maybe they could in Sweden, in that time with that sun; the toothy grin of half-demolished buildings on the Jönköping horizon, the smacking of waves against the pier. Close, some swimmers feel the cold hit their bones, screaming like murder as their toes touch fingers of weed reaching up from the mud and sand. Our hands are stained, the meat of the fruit wedged underneath our fingernails and in between our teeth, and from somewhere is the sound of a gull crying on the breeze.

© 2014 Alyson Miller

Alyson Miller teaches literary studies at Deakin University, Australia. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in both national and international publications. Her book of prose poetry, Dream Animals, is forthcoming with Dancing Girl Press.

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