Bess's Mushrooms

I've always found the love affairs of my four sisters important. Bess is collecting mushrooms this summer, tending the garden, taking the dog for jogs. When her love comes to visit he is so pale we all stare too long and make him blush. What will you do in September, I ask her. And she says she doesn't know. But, I can't decide if she is in love or he is in love with her and she has put a hand out to keep love at bay. When she tells me her love is going away without her, I worry. Her love leaves and hugs me good-bye, he must be the one in love. Where are you going in September, I ask Bess. Maybe to teach somewhere, she says. She puts all her mushrooms on the table and with the book her love has left, she looks for the names of her collection. In the picture of the mushrooms on the open page of the book from her pale love, the mushrooms whirl or is it whorl, dizzying me. I worry about these loves, the lost ones and then found. Bess says if you cut the mushroom right, it'll grow back, not to worry. She keeps finding them, picking them, bringing them home. In the garden her beans grow and yesterday I saw two red tomatoes, the first of the season.