The blackberry bushes made me feel like home no matter where I went.  Due to the fact I didn’t have a place I called home or a place I went back to for holidays, I had to make my own home.  My own place. 

I moved around with my parents as a child and quickly got used to only having the bare minimum in items I held dear.  I kept a bag by my bed in case my parents got the urge to leave in the middle of the night.  Which later in life, I realized it was due to the lack of being able to pay the bills instead of their need for adventure. 

My favorite book had been a book of fables with a blackberry bush on the front.  It had lost or forgotten in one of our moves and my parents had never looked back.  They ever understood my need for home. 

Now that I had my own place, all I did was tend to the bushes in my garden.  I was sure to never let anyone in and not to let my plants out for fear of what they would find out.  And about what I had done. If anyone knew what I had done when I was a child because I wasn’t entirely sure if there was a statute of limitations. Was that what it was called? I just wanted to live my quiet life with no bars, no prison meals. And freedom I had.