. . . . in which i go foraging in a beautiful food forest garden in a place that suggests the english countryside on a breezy summer’s day . . . the entrance is unusually convoluted, like three gates that were all opened on top of each other . . . when i find my way in it is lush and overgrown . . . downhill from me, on the edge of the boundary that goes onto a thick, impenetrable forest is a collection of giant, eight feet tall books and the suggestion of a house just beyond view . . . i am preparing for a recipe in a book shared with kira that invokes nigella . . . it is a dessert she recommends that requires chokeberries, which i am now picking, called “asphyxiation pie”, though seems more like a cobbler or a crumble to me . . . there is a note either in the book or from kira to savour the rich gravy that will form in the bottom and not to discard it . . . i am left with the image of dark black astringent berries in their juices oozing from kira’s mouth and staining her teeth black . . . .
choke