As a child, I learned to eat honeysuckle sugar.

~ Live & Learn

As a child, I learned to eat honeysuckle sugar. It is a tedious process, […] one that requires demonstration and touch. Despite the meager payoff, a few drops of nectar, these are small, bright memories. When I look through my past for a consistent pleasure, I find those empty, discarded blossoms scattered through my childhood summers.

~ Alysia Sawchyn, from “Riverbanks and Honeysuckle,” Cutbank (no. 86, July 2016)

Notes:

  • Inspired by Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration: An Essay: “the surface on which we step has no more substance than the clouds floating above us on a summer day.“
  • Photo of Honeysuckle: Awkward Botany.
  • Prose Source: Memory’s Landscape.  Alysia Sawchyn was the Winner of the CutBank 2016 Big Sky, Small Prose: Flash Contest with Riverbanks and Honeysuckle.

25 thoughts on “As a child, I learned to eat honeysuckle sugar.”

  5. Oooo, I’ve never thought to extract drops of nectar from honeysuckle, let alone drink it. I’m looking forward to next year’s honeysuckle season, as we have some growing in our front garden 🙂 And I won’t care if people think I’m having a second childhood!

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  11. Oh yeah, I love all things honeysuckle! we had a huge one in my backyard. You couldn’t get enough of it but you couldn’t make a dent in it either.

    “So come with me
    I’ll show you where the
    Dogwood’s bloom it’s true
    Lost n’ found n’ lost again
    To the Honeysuckle Blue”
    Kevn Kinney, Drivin and Cryin

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