Skylar Wampler Shucking Corn

Shucking Corn Previously published in the Summer 2019 issue of Sky Island Journal.

The easy afternoon kisses my hands where they settle, pressed into the husk of the ear— green, still damp from the soil.

My grandmother rips those leaves, removes the silk and snaps the shank without hesitation— I’m too aware of my clumsy fingers, tripping over themselves as I peel strand by silken strand from the beaded kernels.

Piano fingers she called them when I missed too many notes, long and graceful. I catch her, sometimes, looking at her own hands, gingerly assessing those twisted joints, catch her tapping out hymns on the gap-toothed keys Wednesday mornings.

There is a pile of husks strewn on today’s newspaper, the headline blank-staring from underneath another refugee turned away and I stumble again: the breath, this time.

Maybe it’s the wrinkled skin that makes mine seem so soft unspotted from days in the sunshine like hers—the farmer’s daughter. Like so many other days spent learning how to bake, to sew, to pick ripened strawberries.

Those moments dripped soft like melted butter pooling under steaming corn— I haven’t found my calling. What is it to walk, unencumbered into waiting church benches, to look at moving hands and not falter? There’s so much to learn: how to save a world, how to shuck corn.

Skylar Wampler University of Virginia, ’21