You cannot gut a tomato without first
remembering the garden. The mud-rutted
fingers pulled at weeds; silver shovels spiraled

to and from the sky. The spit, the rain. It took months–
years– didn’t it, to differentiate? To grow into something

unrecognizable? You knew what this would become,
the way a person finds her own shadow
insufficient. A broken silhouette of scarecrow.

It was then I could not see you– with your bangs
of hay, the ground sprouting milkweed.

Those tired hands milled ‘til the sun had no meaning.
You wore dark clouds as a cape stained
with mud the work helped us forget.

(originally published in Ground Floor Drinkers, Summer 2017)