I ate wild strawberries in the clear cut near the house where my father moved after he moved for the final time. At that house I lived in a trailer under the maple trees in a patch of salmon berries. The clear cut went for miles and miles, filled with foxglove, ferns, strawberries, and ragged fir stumps.

The wild strawberries were as strawberries used to be before people began to cultivate strawberries. Under cultivation strawberries have grown meaty as thick as dog hearts. A handful of domestic berries resembles an offering of animal organs to the sky. The wild strawberries took hours to pick. Each one was as narrow and thin as an almond. They tasted more like lemons than strawberries. I ate them one at a time rather then collecting them in my hand. A handful of wild strawberries was an empty hand stained with juice and marked by tiny barbs.

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This is part five of a five part series of collaboration between Taibi Mastelse and me. She provided five collages, and I wrote text in response. We passed the pictures and text back and forth, and they are.