He suggests going huckleberry picking - A Cerisse Cohen

and you’re worried you’d pick

something toxic. City girl: What do you know about plants?

He knows a couple that foraged and ate wild onion (death camas)

accidentally. But what happened?

He’s given up booze, so now he has ice cream and mixed martial arts

and you.

They were fine. Most of these things don’t actually kill you.

Fine is not the same as unscathed.

If you know what’s bad for you, you can avoid it.

You haven’t committed to giving up anything. So you have ice cream

and work and him.

The truth is, you kind of like getting sick with other people. Your best memory

with your mother: You both had food poisoning and threw up all night. You couldn’t

stop laughing. You’d never felt closer to anyone.

A death camas incident would be exciting in a certain light. It would be

a story.

He reads from the book about locoweed. It’s relatively palatable.

Some animals actively seek it out.

It’s not hard to imagine. I’m sure they do.

He fires up his broken pipe, and dried plant blazes orange.

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A Cerisse Cohen is a second year MFA student and writing instructor at the University of Montana. She has published art journalism in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, The Nation, The New York Observer, and other publications.