Where There’s No Corn Broken Under Foot

Winter with its shreds of sky smashed through my fingers like the harshest sheet of steel warped in the sun. Your mid-winter notes full of recipe pages, the cream-based soups, the cutting board stained with the pulp of green onions. Sometimes there’s nothing left here where there’s no more corn broken under foot and beneath the overpass a cardboard finger is pressed against my throat while the night follows me into your head where I promise you a harvest, a room full of canvas sacks where you may rest in the corner with the warmth of the oven thrumming all night long. You know we may not survive here, but the corn will grow again. Each seed spread apart and recombined. Follow the plastic bags, the soda cans. Follow the trickle of the muddy stream and find the clutter of field where for a time we are safe.