Wild Flowers of Berlin
By JL Merrow
I see her the third day in, a dozen or so women along from me on the bucket chain. We’re clearing a site just off Unter den Linden, and I can’t think why I haven’t noticed her before. Maybe it’s just that the sun hasn’t shone until today, lighting up her wavy blonde hair and making it stand out like a gold coin in a coal scuttle. Not that any of us see much gold, or coal either for that matter, these dark times. The Tiergarten is a sad wasteland, its trees long since gone for fuel.
She’s younger than I am, maybe twenty, with rosy freshness in her cheeks, and wears a sackcloth apron over her pretty green dress, the colour of new leaves after rain. I look down at my old grey frock, made greyer by brick dust, and frown. She smiles a lot as she works, and
