Midwest Nice: A Template

By Laura Bandy

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Start with a child lost in the corn.

She didn't listen when they said, "Stay put."

 

The stalks are tall and rustling, the green

seemed inviting at first, but she is small,

 

can't see over the delicate tops that flutter

like golden silk, like threads tugged loose

 

from her Sunday best dress. The sun, so high

and friendly before, winking her into the field,

 

has dropped, has stopped warming her bare

arms: she shivers a little as a breeze blows dust

 

between the rows. She knows she shouldn't be

here, knows the grownups will be angry, knows

 

so many things she's not supposed to know. How

drought hurt the crops, "That's when the rain

 

just stops," her cousin said, "and then the roots

are thirsty all the time." No one talks at dinner

 

anymore, and mother's mouth a pencil line. Maybe

she will just drop down and wait, pretend hide

 

and seek was the game she was playing all along.

She draws hearts in the dirt and practices her

 

name, but the R is hard; always backwards, wrong. When

they find her later that night, her father's flashlight

 

bobbing between the rows like a small cold moon,

the name is gone, wiped clean by a good girl's hand.

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