[seemoreglass48]: 636.Prose.Blueberries

   The juice sizzled in the palms of her six-year-old hands as the sun rose into the sky and beat across the part in her hair. Grasshoppers arched around her body, flying across her pink zip-up hoody and blue-purple striped leggings. She had worn those leggings thin at the knees, almost to the point of holes. The hands of a child make blueberries messy to the eye of an adult. Colors smeared and painted onto lips, cheeks, and hands; covering the creases of the knuckles. She held the blueberries out in an offering to you—gems sparkling from her hands cupped together—as if waiting for a communion wafer to be placed into them. She looked up at your face and smiled. You took them from her and ate them, ripe and perfect, and counted them on your tongue; felt the dew still on the outside of their skin. When you looked back at her she was licking the juice off her fingers, then rubbed her hands across her pants. You couldn’t help but smile because they were stained a deep blood blue, like the young life flowing in her veins.