Transpiration

TERESA SUTTON

I never eat blueberries from a store; I try not 
to even look at them with their false plumpness,
grown in foreign countries to meet market demand.
Those blueberries never live up to my expectations,
never taste of summer sunshine or a family farm
with gently sloping hills and wild bushes to play amongst.

When you died, I sat close with my hand on your shoulder;
I couldn’t stop thinking about those ripe berries, full, 
a result of transpiration, work of stomatas on the underside 
of a blueberry leaf, so small the human eye cannot see, 
stomatas that open, release the leaf’s water vapor, but also
evaporate moisture from the leaves, stems, flowers, roots,
a necessary cost that allows the leaf to exhale its oxygen 
and take in carbon dioxide to breathe.

Your shoulder cooled under my hand, a bloodless death
in a hospital room—cardiomyopathy—nineteen years old; 
even the doctor cried.

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