Mysteries of the Corn, by Kyle Potvin

Kyle Potvin’s first poetry collection, Sound Travels on Water (Finishing Line
Press), won the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. She was a finalist for the
2008 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. Her poems have appeared in The New
York Times, Measure, The Huffington Post, JAMA, Able Muse and others.

About the poem:

Each fall, my husband and I hang the same decorative corn on our door that we
have displayed since we moved to our home 20 years ago. The copper-colored
ribbon has frayed; the husk is dry. Yet, we hang it, an inside joke. One day, either
the corn or the door will be gone. Loss gnaws at me.