“To grow your own corn you must make sacrifices,” they tell me, but I sneak into my neighbor’s yard with a trowel anyway.

I loosen the edges of a round plot like a spatula to a pancake, roll it up, and drag it over the picket fence to my barrenness (they won’t even know it’s missing). 

When the Almanac dictates my time to plant I take the seeds from my apron pocket and rub my bruised lips against them. One by one I release them into their holes, exhaling.
 
To the wind I ask, Is that enough? 

Each sunrise I leap out of bed to inspect the dirt with a magnifying glass, on the lookout for sprouts even before I piss. In the soft dawn light I water them, read to them, running my fingers through the peach fuzz grass. 

But they were right all along. In the end I grow impatient; I submit. 

First my ears go, torn and dripping in proper Van Gogh fashion, for the body. My teeth are next, extracted with pliers for the hard little kernels. Then my hair, for silk, buzzed and lying in the a heap at my feet. 

With love I surround my seeds with gifts, step back, and watch my corn grow.