Still Sweet
by Kailey Buettner

And I will be alone again this summer. Selling sweet corn by the dozen, its silk like strands of your
hair—the last time I saw you, wind-knotted, tangled in my fingers. Stacking heads of purple cauliflower
bruised under the weight of the sun, their color dimming as the day grows long. My nail beds split, raw
and striped with dirt that smells like every month after May but before the slow ache of September.
Thirteen hours tethered to the earth by heirloom tomatoes, wondering what you're up to, standing still
as the sun drags itself across a tear-stricken sky. Back at the market, a man with a Vietnam veteran hat
buys six ears of corn. His hands tremble as he hands me crumpled bills. Your smile is something else, he
says, his pipe smoke bittersweet, brushing my face like the back of a hand. I never see him again. The
​sweet corn is still sweet. 

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Kailey Buettner (she/her) is an undergraduate at Northern Michigan University. Based in the Upper Peninsula, her poetry explores rural life, memory, and place through fluid, image-driven free verse.