‘Reap What You Sow’ by Alex Reece Abbott

I have seen your expression too many times before, in other places, on other women’s faces.

You stand at the kitchen table of a desolate American farmhouse, dry-lipped, a flush on your cheeks, daring to dream while you work.

Need bread.

Knead dough.

Sift flour.

Stretch gluten.

Egg-wash loaves.

As the new day dawns, there’s a storm brewing somewhere in the Midwest.

It’s sultry, already too hot. You have pushed the windows wide open, and the gauzy curtains float in the prevailing westerly, and the breeze catches tendrils of your wilding Medusa hair.

Cut a cross in that cob like Mama showed you, let the devil out.

Under that brooding, bruised sky, the men sweat in the fields, reaping the wheat, racing to beat the tempest. His scythe is a rusting iron crescent above his shoulder, his redundant braces dangling, limp at his slim hips as he swing-swing-swings, immersed in a restless, golden sea. 

Under the glowering sky, he harvests, his blade slicing the air in graceful arcs, wheat rippling in the breeze. And from the corner of his eye, he sees you, knead-knead-kneading. If his nostrils weren’t filled with dust, he could smell your bread baking.