You tell me I must be careful
avoid the strawberries
they are grown in sewage water, you warn,
they cannot be rinsed clean.
I want to see some of the world
want to learn who I might be
when I am with those who do not know my name
outside the confines of language
role
custom
demands
accomplishments
the expected and the understood
that which makes me familiar to you.
You hear this as accusation, an unveiling of insufficiency
view my hunger
curiosity
aliveness
through the filter of what makes sense to you.
You say you don’t understand.
You can’t see yourself leaving, can’t come with me.
You’ll stay if I promise to be true to you.
You won’t have any other while I’m away, you say.
Will I promise you the same?
No, my love who knows not how to dream.
I will have coffee and wine,
bread and berries
song and dance
wind and rain
kisses and sweat
moon rise and sunset
I will sample all that grows in soil that has not yet
gotten under my fingernails
blackened my bare feet as I dance
in a tiny kitchenette or a sandy shore
with the forever-me who has been here all along
waiting to leave the confines of a world
made small by fear and routine.
Salty, piquant, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter –
this is the taste of freedom, my love.
This is what it means to eat strawberries grown in foreign soil.