Strawberry Moon

The full “strawberry moon” is tomorrow, but someone in a group I am in said to go see it tonight. So I got out of bed and walked to the park to see it, it was too low in the sky for a view at first so I tried at a hotel I know here, which has a rooftop balcony in the restaurant. The night concierge said his colleague had just left, and he would have unlocked the balcony for me but he was alone at the desk.

So I returned to the park and I caught her just before the clouds obscured her.

Probably a bit reckless to be out in a park alone at night, but, I will survive. Or I won’t, in which case, the last thing I saw was beautiful.

I will have to find a better spot to go tomorrow night to see the full moon. Somewhere with less light pollution and, presumably, an even greater risk of murder. On Sunday I spent the day by the Alte Donau, my favorite spot to be these days. I have been trying to break a record for how many days in a row I can be there, swimming. So far the record is 4.

A friend brought some handpicked strawberries. They weren’t the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever had, but they were special, and I was happy to eat them. A few were surprisingly delightful though. Sneaky, juicy, the red running down my palms. That’s summer to me, to be by the water among my friends, eating fruit and getting my hands sticky, to be in the water washing my makeup away and trust the people around me to see me bare. For all my frustration and longing it has to be said, I smiled more often this week. It’s because of all the swimming.

On Sunday I used the word “strawberry” as a verb, perhaps an abuse of poetic license but I think it’s allowed under the umbrella of my multiple food safety licenses.

But, we were offered the last strawberries and I said,

“I think I am a bit strawberried out”

I stained my journal with strawberry juice, the ink was already pink on the opening pages, so I leaned into the stain, smacking a pink thumb print into the upper corner of the page, so they knew I was there. As if the writing therein wasn’t enough.

So, if I get murdered under the strawberry moon, tell them they can identity my body by the thumbprint on page 5 of my new journal.

Tell them I went down enjoying the sweetness life has to offer, but that I deserved more.

Tell them I was still hungry