He doesn’t rotate the produce.
After hauling the crates from the loading dock,
he unloads new spuds onto
last week’s potatoes.
Unripe cantaloupes
crush sweetly-scented melons,
burying their soft flesh.
Brown and wilted heads of kale,
settle under crisp, dark leafy green.
She pushes through the watermelon
checking for gold spots and sweet veins.
Holding up dense green ovals and
twisting her arms to inspect the fruit.
Her hands slip tapping the rind,
the fleshy center splatters red, thick
and slick and dying.
Shaking she kneels, like before,
to scrub the death from her feet.
Savannah O'Toole Renehan lives in Maryland with her husband, three children, and a geriatric gerbil named Jellybean. She works as a fundraising professional for an independent school and spends her free time with her family. She loves the outdoors, traveling, reading, and writing poetry.
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