Living as Labor

The farmers’ market jams
you insisted
you would eat

are good
for easing toast
down

my throat as it
habituates
to dryness.

You left in summer,
your last days green
as you prefer them

while I, unable
to give up
the world’s

little sweetness,
persist benumbed
to Halloween.

Alone in our fields,
I’m a poor
stand-in,

more scavenger
than scarecrow,
& like the apples

in the bowl
I am soft
& go to pulp.

Yellowed autumn
crumples too, griefstruck
with the loss of you,

& the pumpkins
on the porch
collapse inward,

giving up their faces,
an act perfumed
by rot

& wet leaves.

Jenna V. Wray (née Sumpter) edits for Kelsay Books and The Orchards Poetry Journal. Her work appears in Caesura, New Welsh Review, and elsewhere. A member of the WAY Writing Group in central Arkansas, USA, she’s received multiple 2025 awards from White County Creative Writers, a BFA from the University of Evansville and Harlaxton College, and a much-belated OCD diagnosis. Find her on Instagram/Substack/X @JVSReads.