The Berry Pickers

by Amanda Peters

There is a code among the dying: let the living speak. They have longer to atone for it.

books become more than paper between hard cardboard, more than the alphabet organized into words and printed on a page.

Some people, I have learned, are meant to read great works and others are meant to write them. Often, these are not the same people.

Time quickens the older you get, as if the universe is trying to push you toward the finish line, to make room for the younger, the stronger, to mark your brief place in history and move on.