Nora Cornell September 2024
This is what I get
for being my mother’s
true-born daughter:
an insatiable appetite
for what summer produces.
I am alive exactly as she is.
We carry the same cravings
low in our bellies and deep
in our winter-worn hearts.
In August, at the market,
we stuff bags full
of as much as we can carry
and a bundle of dill, too,
just because we want it.
Each year, I am more like her,
and we stand together, quiet,
as she teaches me new tricks.
I am nine and it is an heirloom
in wedges, mottled green and red
and dripping around my chin.
I am eleven, and it is eggplant,
roasted whole and smothered
with smuggled tahini in an unlabeled jar.
It takes until I am seventeen
to understand the radish, uncut
and bitter, swiped through
the butter dish, eaten whole
with a pucker.
Nora Cornell is a poet and artist from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is the creator of the Book Studies major at Wellesley College, where she explores the intersections of text, image, and materiality. Her work can be seen in The Blue Nib and Furrow Magazine. If she isn’t writing, she’s probably watching a sitcom or walking by a lake.
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