A Berry Good Day!

Aami Brontë,
Let’s go for a not-so-fancy picnic before the end of summer. I’ll grab a dusty book from the library and you should bring an old blanket. On our way, we’ll pluck ripe strawberries, red with love and put them in the forsaken plastic cookie container in my bag. We’ll help an old woman to cross the road and she would ask us to wait at her gate to give us a piece of the papaya she had saved for her grandkids. During the stroll, let’s pluck pretty flowers and talk about nothing and everything, while we make floral tiaras for each other under the soft summer sun.

We’ll lie down in a field of lush green grass and watch the clouds paint the sky in different colours and call it “pathetic fallacy”.We’ll read a short story together like we used to do in college and come up with multiple interpretations to feel completely at ease. We’ll talk about our unfinished dissertations, the beauty of handwritten letters or about how all our troubles fade when our noses are stuck in a book. You should tell me that my lips healed from the overuse of lipstick and compare it to “sun-kissed strawberries bursting with flavour.” I’ll tell you that you rock in your short hair and that I haven’t seen a pair of eyes as beautiful as yours. We’ll ask the stranger with a guitar to click our pictures and later she’ll sit on our blanket and we’ll tell her about how we started calling ourselves the Brontë sisters. We’ll talk for insanely long hours and she’ll ask us to watch the sunset while she plays La Vie En Rose on her guitar. The sun will disappear with her song and she’ll whisper, “It was a berry good day” while chewing the last strawberry we had plucked.

On our way back home, we’ll stealthily climb the compound wall of the good old woman’s ancient home and plant the papaya seeds in her courtyard and lie to our parents about the dirt on our pants. Before the darkness begins to fall around us, we’ll click a few more happy pictures. Then we’ll lie in the middle of the empty highway to stargaze and discuss whether Van Gogh is overrated or art is insanity. So, Brontë, collect all your teeny wishes and keep them in a box, because we’re going for a not-so-fancy-but-berry -cute-picnic before the end of summer.

Love, now and always

Mel Brontë